Short Week, Odd Day

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Due to the icy roads and frigid conditions that closed school on Monday and Tuesday I had a very short work week this week. To cap it off, today was a very odd day at school. Our end of the 7th grade hall spent from 7:45am to 10:00am in the gym this morning so the other end of the 7th grade hall could take their Science Final Exam in peace. They also needed to use a couple of our rooms for students whose accommodations require they be in small groups or tested one-on-one. Our students behaved so well while in the gym that I wonder if we shouldn't hold all our classes in there. The PE coaches were in charge of them while we were in the gym. My three colleagues and I were just there as added pairs of eyes. It helped that most of the time the students were there the coaches were projecting a movie on the gym wall. The name of the movie was "You've Been Served." It was a story of an inner city Los Angeles break dancing crew that went up against a bunch of wannabe rich boys from the 'burbs in a dance off, and won. Of course there was a lot more drama to it, but I didn't watch much of the movie as I was busy reworking my lesson plans for the rest of the day. I decided not to teach Math today. Since Martin Luther King Jr's birthday is coming up on Sunday, and the US Federal Holiday in his honor on Monday, and with the permission of my assistant principal, I did a lesson on Martin Luther King, Jr, the Civil Rights Movement, and desegregation here in North Carolina. I used my own personal experiences of having lived through the forced busing in Wilmington, NC in the early 1970s as part of my lesson. The students were interested and engaged and asked some great and sometimes pointed questions about how things were then. I think they left my class with a much greater appreciation for what people like Dr. King and the Freedom Riders went through then, and what they need to do going forward to keep the dream of liberty and justice for all alive. "We are not there yet," I told them. "But we have to keep working towards it while jealously guarding the progress we've made from those who would drag us backward." Do you have any personal recollections of the Civil Rights Movement from those times? How do you feel about Dr. King? Do you believe we are getting closer to realizing his dream, or do you fear we are starting to backslide?