We watched part of it, observing for impact, gestures, main topic and even conclusion. And what were his incredible examples and details? For one, an 8th grade girl from South Carolina who wrote a letter asking Congress not to cut education spending. And she was there, next to Mrs. Obama, getting cheers from the President and Congress and having the very words from her letter quoted by the President in his speech. Letters do matter. Hers did.
President Obama: "I think about Ty'Sheoma Bethea, the young girl from that school I visited in Dillon, South Carolina, a place where the ceilings leak, the paint peels off the walls, and they have to stop teaching six times a day because the train barrels by their classroom.She had been told that her school is hopeless. But the other day after class, she went to the public library and typed up a letter to the people sitting in this chamber. She even asked her principal for the money to buy a stamp.The letter asks us for help and says, "We are just students trying to become lawyers, doctors, congressmen like yourself, and one day president, so we can make a change to not just the state of South Carolina, but also the world. We are not quitters.'...That's what she said: "We are not quitters."
Rest of the period was worktime: novel project, writer's notebooks, speech, vocabulary #4.
