History, Posters and Vocabulary

November 5th 2008
Something great big and important has occurred.
Barack Obama has been elected as the 44th President of the United States of America.
It is historic because he is African American, in light of the turbulent history towards people who have been considered minorities in terms of their social power, this is a feat that speaks to every American and person outside of our borders.

Personhood
Barack Obame being elected by the majority of this country’s diverse citizenry says to the world that WE CAN aspire towards an ideal. We as Americans can aspire towards greatness and can accomplish what humanity deserves: decency, humility and a commitment to come together to work towards peace and personhood. That’s right, personhood: sisterhood, brotherhood, partisan-hood, racial-hood, and cultural-hood. The very act of Obama becoming our 44th president shows the world unflinchingly that we are evolving towards loftier aspirations than what we have currently achieved in this country- for our world.

How Do You Spell OBAMA?
I could explain the details of my take on the evolution. But I think I can best express how this translates from an experience with my 2nd and 3rd grade combination class at a ground zero of financial and resource poverty in a distinctive part of Oakland, California. On Tuesday, November 4th, 2008- yesterday, I gave an assignment to my students. I had a training to attend for half a day so the assignment had to be completed after I was gone. The activity required them to put their weekly vocabulary words in alphabetical order on a poster with a title and a nice border.
At the onset of the activity one of the first questions an eight-year-old asked another was, “How do you spell Obama?”

Allensworth
My substitute arrived soon after and I was out. As an aside, to my utter surprise, the arrival of my substitute presented none other than a distinguished 70’s-ish African-American gentle man of fair skin, blue eyes, straighter hair, whom was a member of the Allensworth historical organization. I immediately recognized him from from his visit to my classroom where he appeared in period costume to my class in January of this year. But at the time I was teaching in another school district alltogether! For those of you who don’t know, Allensworth is the only town to be founded, financed and governed by African Americans on August 3, 1908. Colonel Allen Allensworth, the norther California community’s founder, was previously one of Kentucky’s delegates to the Republic national convention in 1880 and 1884. (see full details at: http://www.friendsofallensworth.com/allensworth/allensworth_history.html)

Digression
I don’t mean to digress, but as a firm believer that there are no accidents, but mere unfolding of what is to be- I felt something freaky going on. Suffice to say, what and when things occur in our lives- truly shape who we are. You can either be present and take it all in- or die in ignorance.

100%
When I returned to my class, I returned to posters where the alphabetization was completely on point- albeit secondary to the messages about Barack Obama. All 20 of my students are African American with the exception of one: he is Latino.
“Go OBAMA”
“OBAMA!”
“WE LOVE YOU OBAMA!”
..are just a few of the banner inscriptions. And, there were Obama portraits that consumed more space than the alphabetized vocabulary- 100% accurate by every student.

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