Ty’Sheoma Bethea is an eighth-grade student at J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon, S.C. And she helped write Pres. Obama’s speech tonight.
A few weeks ago, Ty’Sheoma went to her local library, sat down in front of a public computer, and typed a single-spaced letter to Congress.
Her school is a decrepit facility. The roof leaks, the heating’s faulty. Some classes meet in a rusty mobile classroom — a trailer. Schools of its type are featured in the documentary, “Corridor of Shame.”
“People are starting to see my school as an hopeless, uneducated school which we are not,” she wrote. She asked for help to “prove to the world that we have an chance in life just like other schools and we can feel good about what we are doing because of the conditions we are in now we can not succeed in anything.”
“We are not quitters,” she wrote.
The next morning, her principal scanned the letter and emailed it.
Pres. Barack Obama visited the school as a candidate, and he mentioned it again during a recent press conference. Ty’Sheoma’s letter landed on his desk, and last night, the girl – in a lovely lavendar dress – and her mother, Dina Leach, sat with the Obama family during the President’s speech.
Ty’Sheoma in ’36. Rock on.
