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Inaugural Becomes Teaching Tool

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By ADAM EMERSON and MARILYN BROWN

amerson@tampatrib.com mbrown@tampatrib.com

Published: January 21, 2009

For Florida schools, the inauguration gave teachers a chance to guide their students toward a particularly important event in the nation's history.

How they did that was up to each school, but Gov. Charlie Crist and Education Commissioner Eric J. Smith urged all districts to make the broadcast of the inauguration available "to every public school student."

Hillsborough County teachers were discouraged from just "turning on the television." The inauguration of the nation's first African-American president should be linked to a "grade-appropriate lesson that includes more than a passive viewing of the television coverage," social studies supervisors wrote recently to teachers.

Here's how the event unfolded Tuesday at two local schools.

Dowdell Middle Magnet
The 100 students in the college-readiness program at Dowdell Middle celebrated the historic inauguration with a hot dog cookout before President Barack Obama took the oath of office.

It was consolation for what could have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

At one point last spring, Dowdell's principal, Robert Lawson, envisioned the election of the nation's first black president and wanted his students in the college-readiness program to witness the inauguration firsthand.

The program's administrators had estimated how much it would cost to travel and lodge in Washington: about $500 per student. What school dollars could not pay for would be covered by fundraising.

But it was too costly at a time when school districts were cutting millions from their budgets.

Dowdell teacher Keith Jacobs turned the letdown into a teachable moment.

"You have to show perseverance and adapt to something that does not go your way," he said to his seventh- and eighth-graders.

***

Shanquell Vixon, a 13-year-old black girl, had never thought much about becoming president.

She joined her classmates in Dowdell Middle's college-readiness program to watch history unfold on a classroom projector. She was ready for the moment - the school had scheduled classroom activities linked to the inauguration for the school day - but what it could mean for her future dawned only recently.

"I thought this would never happen," she said. "Now I know I can do anything."

***

"I hope you all appreciate what just happened here."

Keith Jacobs, a seventh- and eighth-grade teacher at Dowdell Middle, turns off the projector that broadcast the historic moment for his students. He knows there are lessons planned for the day - writing reflections on the inauguration in social studies class, studying Obama's environmental policies in science class - but he also knows there's a lesson that speaks directly to his students.

About 85 percent of the students in his college-readiness program live at or below the poverty level. And many, like Obama, are raised in one-parent households.

In other words, the inauguration presented the ultimate role model.

"I don't have to use an athlete or an entertainer," Jacobs said.

Pizzo Elementary

More than 700 students at Tampa's Pizzo Elementary School watched televisions perched in corners of their classrooms as preparations for the inauguration got under way.

Even kindergarten students were poised to see the first president they probably will remember. They wore homemade pink construction-paper hatbands declaring, "Today we welcome our new president."

"No, that's not Barack Obama," teacher Raquel Calderon told her class as they watched the outgoing president's arrival. "That's George W. Bush."

***

Fifth-graders waited in Judy Chugg's art class with charcoal drawings of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama that they created last week on squares of paper copied from photographs and then attached to a white board. Under King's image were the words "Dare to Dream." Under Obama: "Become Your Dream."

"Obama's going to get sworn in to the White House today, and everybody's watching," said Eion Gustitis, 11, one of Chugg's students. "It's the first time in history a black person was voted to be the president."

***

When it was time for the transfer of power, fifth-graders in Pattie Bean's homeroom class stood when the Washington audience stood for the oath of office, some raising their right hands and reciting the words with Vice President Joseph Biden, then Obama.

At least half the students, scheduled to graduate from high school in 2016, are bilingual, Bean said, with families from Jordan, Bosnia, Jamaica, Haiti and Burma. The little boy from Burma arrived less than two weeks ago and speaks no English, but he watched the ceremony intently.

Most students said they liked everything they heard in Obama's speech.

Eleanna Lattimore, 10, said, "It was very, very, very good." She especially liked "when Obama said that we can change this world and we can start all over."

Joelle Williams, 10, said she wasn't really sure what Obama was going to say before his speech. She hung on every word, though, and later said she liked everything he said, especially "his confidence in what he is saying, and he is not doubting himself or the country."

Bean said her students had been preparing for the inauguration because so many "don't fully understand our government."

"They are discovering history this year."

Reporter Adam Emerson can be reached at (813) 259-8285. Reporter Marilyn Brown can be reached at (813) 259-8069.

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