Desk Jockeyed
This is a true story.
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/nodesks.asp
********************************
In September of 2005, a social studies
schoolteacher from Arkansas did
something not to be forgotten. On the
first day of school, with permission of
the school superintendent, the principal,
and the building supervisor, she took
all of the desks out of the classroom.
The kids came into first period, they
walked in; there were no desks. They
obviously looked around and said,
"Where's our desks?"
The teacher said, "You can't have a
desk until you tell me how you earn
them."
They thought, "Well, maybe it's our
grades."
"No," she said.
"Maybe it's our behavior."
And she told them, "No, it's not even
your behavior."
And so they came and went in the first
period, still no desks in the classroom.
Second period, same thing. Third period.
By early afternoon television news crews
had gathered in the class to find out
about this crazy teacher who had taken
all the desks out of the classroom. The
last period of the day, the instructor
gathered her class.
They were at this time sitting on the floor
around the sides of the room. She said,
"Throughout the day no one has really
understood how you earn the desks that
sit in this classroom ordinarily. Now I'm
going to tell you."
She went over to the door of her classroom
and opened it, and as she did 27 U.S.
veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked
into that classroom, each one carrying a
school desk. And they placed those
school desks in rows, and then they
stood along the wall. By the time they
had finished placing the desks, those kids
for the first time I think perhaps in their
lives understood how they earned those
desks.
Their teacher said, "You don't have to
earn those desks. These guys did
it for you. They put them out there for
you, but it's up to you to sit here
responsibly, to learn, to be good students
and good citizens, because they paid a price
for you to have that desk, and don't ever
forget it."
