My Impromptu Speech at the Eleanor Roosevelt Award Ceremony

 My impromptu speech was something like this:

I started today off in the principal's office.

No, I wasn't in trouble. I'm a first grade reading intervention teacher who speaks Spanish, and I was there to translate for a little boy who had just moved here from Guatemala. He's trying to make sense of some cultural differences and had messed up by getting a little too close to a classmate.

He left the meeting with this takeaway: We can learn from our mistakes.

This August, I completed my doctorate in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. My dissertation was on unaccompanied child immigrants of the past and present. In particular, I researched Eleanor Roosevelt's project to bring 5000 child refugees from internment camps in southern France to the United States. Despite the efforts of many organizations and even though we had the entrance visas for all those children, the borders closed too quickly. Only about three hundred children made it here. Red tape, pride, prejudice, fear, and miscommunication delayed the process that could have saved so many more.

But we can learn from our mistakes. Now there are children in detention centers on our own soil, there are children who worry about Asian hate and who need reminding that Black Lives Matter. Before I moved to Somerset County, I had a swastika painted on my house...There are marginalized people in the LGBTQIA community, and so many others who need help. We need to learn from our mistakes.

Yesterday afternoon, that same little boy was taken to the guidance office to make peace with the classmate he had offended. The guidance counselor and I were both so impressed that the two first graders had made peace and become friends without our intervention. By modeling kindness, forgiveness, and the willingness to grow, we had set the groundwork for a world where the children could do the same thing. Instead of holding a formal reconciliation process between the two kids, we listened as they shared with one another that they had a lot in common. He missed his grandmother in Guatemala. She missed her grandmother in India.

My little friend learned from his mistakes and went a step further. He reached out in friendship and growth.

In this room, there are so many amazing activists who are working to make a better future. We are trying to learn from the past's mistakes and model kindness and inclusion to the next generation. I am honored and grateful to be included among you. Thank you so much.

And I have good news for you. The next generation can learn from us. They can learn from the good acts that we model-- the acts of community, of unity, of generosity. They will also need to learn from our mistakes. They will keep helping create this better world. I have this hope because of all of us and because of the children I am so lucky to support.

Thank you!