This week, we couldn’t help but be inspired by National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman’s recitation of her poem The Hill We Climb at President Biden’s Inauguration. Her words, energy, courage, and her story embody all the transformational power of our youngest generation.
“The new dawn blooms as we free it
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it
If only we’re brave enough to be it”
Gorman grew up with a speech impediment and an auditory processing disorder, as the daughter of a single mother in Southern California. She excelled in school, starting to write at the age of 11, gaining inspiration and support from her local library. She attended Harvard, received a “Genius Grant,” and was named the nation’s first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017.
Gorman is exemplary and we can all look to her and her words for inspiration. But we also need to remember that there are students like her, going to our public libraries and fervently reading and writing. We appreciate and value educators, like Amanda’s mother, who inspired a love of learning in her. Let us all look to inspire learning and creativity and support those future poet laureates in our schools, communities, and libraries. There are students like Amanda Gorman across our classrooms; let’s work for them.
We wake up everyday and work to inspire young people to find out what inspires them. We do that by teaching families how to prepare their children for the journey of the college search. We are on this journey because we believe that all students deserve to know the truth: that they are inherently capable, and uniquely powerful, but only if they choose to believe it, and are given a chance.
We work in education because building young people up is a way of acknowledging publicly that they have inherent worth and potential to change our world. We also know, one day or another, that they may change that world after we are gone.
“because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain,
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy,
and change our children's birthright.”
Each day is a new dawn that belongs to our children, but for some while longer, we adults get to serve as stewards. Let us be brave in our work today.