Letters to the editor: Proud of students
To the editor:
Last week, Tonganoxie students wrote letters to The Mirror. Their message: We’re good kids who sometimes make bad choices. As a Tonganoxie teacher, I see kids make right choices every day. These are small acts of kindness that don’t make the news. Here are some examples:
Recently, Billy Anderson sat in class, supposedly reading, but Billy fidgets, and soon, bored with reading, began exploring the sights around his desk. A box on the floor caught his eye. Being a curious youngster, he looked inside. There he found a wad of bills that would make many 14-year-old boys’ eyes glaze over with images of video games they might add to their collections. Billy considered no such thing. Strolling to my desk with the money, he said, “Uh … I think somebody’s going to be missing this.” His peers were so impressed they applauded him. I rewarded him with a donut. He seemed pleased.
Here’s another incident. One Saturday, I went to my classroom to work. Some eighth-grade girls who were at the school saw me leaving the building with an armload of files. They rushed over, insisting I let them help me carry the load to my car.
Finally, Friday, as I was distributing papers to students, I tripped and fell, smacking my hip hard as I landed on the floor. It hurt, and initially I wasn’t sure if I was injured, so I lay on the floor a few seconds assessing the damage. (There was none.) As the class grew quiet, one student, Jeremie Maus, came over and helped me to my feet. Anyone who has experienced the indignity of falling in public understands how thankful I was that a young man like Jeremie was there to lend a hand.
I’m proud of our kids. These are small acts of kindness that speak volumes about their character.
No cameras will capture these stories. I suppose there’s nothing newsworthy about kids returning money instead of pocketing it, or offering teachers a helping hand instead of mouthing off. After all, these are just “small” things.
Denise LaRosh,
Tonganoxie Junior High School teacher.
Letters to the editor: They deserve better
To the editor:
Does Congressman Jim Ryan care about our young men and women in Iraq?
You be the judge.
When Congressman Ryan had the opportunity to vote on a bill with all kinds of laws to protect our servicemen and women against unscrupulous creditors — Service Members Anti-Predatory Lending Protection Act (House bill H.R. 97) — he voted no.
When Congressman Ryan had the opportunity to vote on a bill to allow service members and their families to pay in-state tuition if they were stationed in that state (House bill H.R. 197), Congressman Ryan voted no.
When the bill to require institutions of higher education to preserve the educational status and financial resources of military personnel called to active duty (House bill H.R. 333), Mr. Ryan voted no again.
The list goes on, but Congressman Ryan found time to write 19 bills to temporally stop the tariff on about any kind of shoe or shoes you could think of. (House bills H.R. 3386-3395 and H.R. 3483-3491.)
Maybe he needed campaign funds or just felt sorry for the shoe industries. I wish he cared as much about our service members.
Mr. Ryan also found time to write bill H.R. 4168. This bill provides for $500 grants to immigrants who apply for citizenship, to teach them English and history. It would be nice if our service people could get something to help them after they come back home but Congressman Ryan voted against that, too, in bill H.R. 772. That gives us an idea of how much U.S. Congressman Jim Ryan thinks of our service people on active duty.
I’ll bet the Big Red One at Fort Riley really likes Mr. Ryan.
Does Congressman Jim Ryan take care of veterans? The Disabled American Veterans give him a zero rating. That is the bottom of the barrel. Folks, if we send them to war, we should take care of them when they are there and when they come home. Don’t desert them when you don’t need them anymore.
Jim King,
Perry.