Donald Trump’s election has most definitely caused some serious emotions here and around the world most of it not very good. In the midst of protests and unrest, it is so refreshing to see women and men of color trying to stay positive and speak positivity and hope to the people around them.
Our children who are the most in vulnerable and sometimes the most influenced group of people need focused reinforcement and one teacher has gone viral for doing just that. You might have seen this video of Jasmyn Wright teaching her third-grade class to push through when faced with hard or difficult situations:
“What if it’s too hard?” Wright asked her students.
“I’m gonna push through!” a chorus of little voices responded.
“What if it’s too tough?” she continued.
“I’m gonna push through!” the class answered.
“What if you’re too young?” Wright asked.
“That ain’t true!” the students answered.
“What if you’re too black?”
“That ain’t true!”
According to the Root who interviews Jasmyn is a poet and spoken-word artist and she shared her video to Facebook which if you check now has had over 3.2million views.
This is a snip of that interview:
“I know that with my class specifically, sometimes they struggle with believing in themselves or sometimes they struggle with grappling through an assignment or they struggle with interactions with their peers,” the 27-year-old said.
“With the election that went on, they were more troubled and they were upset,” she continued. “[So I thought,] yes, this is true, this has happened, but that doesn’t stop us from pushing through. We still have a calling, we still have a purpose, we still are made to leave an imprint in the world, and we cannot give up because of whatever happened.”
When Jasmyn was asked if the children were too young to absorb the message or even understand the importance of the message in the midst of this troubling time she said this:
“They live in the same world that we do, they watch the same shows that we do, they listen to the same music, they hear the same news, and they are sponges and they soak things in. They’re also intelligent, so they can gain their own knowledge on issues,” she said.
“I want them to be their own source of encouragement when it seems there is no one else around who believes in them,” she said, adding that she works mostly through positive affirmations.
As if that were not enough, Jamyn and two of her freinds have started a nonprofit called I Am My Sister’s Keeper which focuses on girls ages 12-18.
“Our vision is to successfully stand with and support girls as they move through the passages of womanhood, while instilling motivation, determination and sheer willpower in them,” the group states on its website.
“My students know who they are, they know what’s expected of them, [and] expectations for them are high. Once you present a person with a sense of identity or with a sense of responsibility … they are going to act to par,” she said. “I don’t do much management in my classroom because my students are already filled with these gifts of affirmation, these gifts of expectation which allow for minimal management in the classroom for us because they want to succeed; they want to maximize their potential. I teach all of them every day that they are born with a gift, that [they] are not a mistake, that [they] were born for a reason. “Whenever we’re having a rough day,” she said, “I tell them, ‘Don’t let your purpose go to waste.’”
Thank you Jasmyn for your amazing service to our children a parent could only dream of having a child enter your classroom!
