Kate's Kids: Meet Ty'Sheoma Bethea

An 8th grader from Dillon, South Carolina - she sat bright-eyed and shiny-suited, right next to the First Lady at last night's joint-congressional speech by President Obama. As I watched the First Lady come into the chamber and take her seat, I started to conjure up predictions about why the little girl was selected to bepresent for the evening's address. As tradition has it, it is usually a hand-picked few that sit in the balcony with the First Lady, often being individuals who are mentioned during the speech.In recent years, the selection of these folks have ranged from Hurricane victims to military men and women. Therefore,it was only natural for me to presume this little girl had experienced a great tragedy too early in life, was facing a more difficult life ahead, and she was positioned their to extract sympathy and sorrow. Not Ty'Sheoma. I was astonished to hear that she was no victim at all!! In fact, she was a survivor, and an action-driven one at the tender age of 12.

I thought to myself..this is what we have to look forward to. Citizenship that is about action. Ty'Sheoma goes to school in South Carolina in which the walls and infrastructure are decaying. The very funds of the stimulus package will go to schools and educational institutions such as Ty'Sheoma's to see that all children have the opportunity to be in a healthy, uplifting learning environment. Her national attention is not by happen-stance, but rather driven by the very action of a young American calling upon her leaders to do something about the very public institution that they exist to provide her and her peers - a school where the walls are intact and the ceilings aren't falling.

In her letter to lawmakers, she noted, "People are starting to see my school as a hopeless, uneducated school, which we are not," she wrote. "We finally want to prove to the world that we have a 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."

She's not looking for sympathy, she's looking for action. And proving herself to be a catalyst for change as well. My hats off to Miss Bethea.