Martin Luther King Jr.

One more blog post for tonight: I just wanted to share how much I love teaching about Martin Luther King Jr.

For one thing, it is good for them to hear that grown-ups make mistakes too. Yep, they're the ones who made those silly laws about water fountains and where to sit on the bus and what school to go to.

We also read the story of Ruby Bridges, who was 6 years old - just like them. Young children are important and can do hard things like forgiving people who are mean.

But my favorite part of teaching about Martin Luther King Jr. is that they don't get it. They don't understand why people would be mean to someone just because they look different. They are glad that everyone in our class can be together at school regardless of their physical appearance.

Martin said in his most famous speech that he had a dream of children living in a nation in which they were not judged by the color of their skin. I'm not going to debate how the world or country is doing as a whole, but I can tell you that the dream is reality in our classroom.