PHILADELPHIA, Pa. – A lesson of self-affirmation by a Philadelphia teacher is going viral after the teacher posted a Facebook video of the positive message.
The video shows Jasmyn Wright, who is a third grade teacher at Frederick Douglass Mastery Charter School, asking her students a series of questions, to which the children respond “I’m going to push through!” and “That ain’t true.”
“What if it’s too hard?” she asked her students.
“I’m going to push through!” they responded in unison.
“What if it’s too rough?” Wright continued.
“I’m going to push through!” the class chanted.
“What if you’re just too dumb?” Wright asked.
“That ain’t true!” the students answered.
“What if you’re too black?” she asked.
“That ain’t true!” the children said emphatically.
Jasmyn Wright said on her Facebook page that they do an exercise every morning to set the tone for the day. Her students are encouraged to push through distractions, adversity, and challenges.
Jasmyn Wright
This particular day, Wright said the exercise was in response to some on her students being “troubled” and “upset” after the election of President-Elect Donald Trump.
“With the election that went on, they were more troubled and they were upset,” Wright told The Root. “[So I thought,] yes, this is true, this has happened, but that doesn’t stop us from pushing through. We still have a calling, we still have a purpose, we still are made to leave an imprint in the world, and we cannot give up because of whatever happened.”
The 27-year-old teacher, who is also a poet and spoken-word artist, said she wants her students to be “their own source of encouragement when it seems there is no one else around who believes in them.”
The viral video has been watched over 3 million times and shared nearly 50,000 times on Facebook.
