what i said at church today

instead of a sermon at church today, a few of us were asked to share our thoughts on faith and education. this is what i had to say ...

true confessions - adam sent me an email asking if i would participate in today's service and ... i ignored it. now before you begin to "boo" me - i ignored it because i didn't attend a christian college. just the opposite - i went to the most expensive university in the united states ... a place where it seemed the only religion was the doctrine of self-absorption and message of basking in the glory of excess. i wish i could say that it was THAT experience that pushed me into a career of public service, but i'm not sure that it did. yet ANOTHER reason to ignore adam's email. it wasn't until adam cornered me after last week's service and explained to me that it wasn't really as much about attending a christian college as it was about how my faith has influenced my ongoing education and career decisions. THAT i can do!

my faith, my strong commitment to equality of opportunity for all people and the directive in luke 12:48 - from everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked - have directed my path. living by those principles, i've transitioned from an inner city special education teacher to a state-level special education policy maker and finally to a federal-level special education policy maker. however, even as i move forward in my career and become more and more removed from kids with disabilities in classrooms, i never forget how it all started and for whom i work with and on behalf of. with that i leave you with the last paragraph of my purpose statement from my grad school application -

i do this for willie who entered my class unable to read in the 6th grade, but left reading at the 2nd grade level only three years later. i do this for kaylor who was so shy that she never uttered a word, but three years later we had to set an IEP goal to get her to be quiet. i do this for marcus who would bang his head so violently against the wall that he would end up bloodied and disoriented requiring medical attention, but is now attending college and living independently. and i do this for noah who, even as he spiraled into a more and more delusional and isolated space resisting any human interaction, would still smile when i asked him to dance.