Educational Profiles in Courage

I’ve spent much of my adult life embedded in the pursuit of teaching, learning, and educational funding. As a college student, high school teacher, graduate student, college executive, and elected school board member, I've put my whole heart into public education. But it was two experiences – two profiles in courage, if you will, that challenged my heart and once again reinforced for me why education is the paramount duty of this state.

First, the great Jonathan Kozol (Savage Inequalities) was invited to speak to the community college trustees in January and I had the distinct privilege of escorting Jonathan around town for two days. We shared meals and had the opportunity to truly dialogue about his passion for public education and the rich truths that he had embraced as a researcher and author studying the resiliency of youth in our poorly funded urban districts around the country.

The second amazing experience came when I observed our community as we prepared for and hosted Greg Mortenson (Three Cups of Tea). These two educational leaders are not over the top, they do not demand attention, nor do they lead with the latest East-coast, private-university, buzz-trend in educational theory that has come to dominate our teacher preparation programs. Instead, they both stand for the same basic belief: All children can learn when they are provided a safe opportunity! Whether our poorest urban kids, or young girls half way around the world growing up in gender-oppressive societies, the human being if nothing else is a learning being. To deny any child their own pursuit of knowledge and self discovery is to deny their humanity.

Thank you Jonathan and Greg for taking your own personal risks, your own personal journeys, and teaching us that empowering the mind is the greatest catalyst for social justice we will ever know.

Should I get the chance to serve in the Washington State Legislature, I will do my best to harness my own courage; to fight with passion for an education system that embraces every learner; and to always understand that no matter the issue, the limitations, and the doubts, if a child’s well being is the object of our efforts, we must stay in the fight until we have won.