Reaching Beyond Where We Are

Brooklyn, NY

I came across this passage two days ago in the readings for one of my education classes. Its words capture some of the hope, and joy, and inspiration I've been feeling as Obama becomes the leader of the United States. A leader, and I think a teacher too.

We are all in process, we who are teachers along with those we teach. And in a pluralist world, with newcomers every day, we somehow have to realize that no one of them is fixed forever, identified forever by a culture, a religion, a class, an ethnic identity. Like ourselves, they may be aware of their roots, of their beginnings, but like ourselves, they need to use their imaginations "to light the slow fuse of possibility." Feeling our own new beginnings, we have been learning here - as the seasons give way to new seasons, as things change and change again - what it means to break with anchorage, what it means to move with others, to care for others, to reach beyond where we are.

~ Maxine Greene