The Desks...

My wife forwarded this story to me via email. As I always do, I verify its truthfulness via SNOPES and much to my suprise found out that it is 100% true. The story, is of a woman who really understands what it means to “Support The Troops" and that Freedom is not free, someone somewhere has to pay the price:

Back in September of 2005, on the first day of school, Martha Cothren, a social studies school teacher at Robinson High School inLittle Rock, did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent and the principal, she took all of the desks out of the classroom.
The students came into first period and discovered there were no desks.
They looked around and asked, “Ms. Cothren, where are our desks?”
She replied, “You can’t have a desk until you tell me how you earn them.”
They thought, “Well, maybe it’s our grades.”
“No,” she answered.
“Maybe it’s our behavior.”
She told them, “No, it’s not your behavior.”
And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom.
Second period, same thing and third period-no desks. By early afternoon, television news crews had gathered in Ms. Cothren’s class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom. The last period of the day, Martha Cothren gathered her class. They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room.
She stated to her students, “Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that ordinarily sit in thisclassroom.”
She added, “Now I’m going to show you.”
Martha Cothren went over to the door of her classroom and opened it. 27 U.S. veterans, wearing their uniforms, walked into that classroom,each one carrying a school desk. And they placed those school desks in rows, and then they stood along the walls. By the time they had finished placing those desks, those kids for the first time understood how they earned those desks. FREEDOM!
Martha said, “You don’t have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it’s up to you to sit here responsibly to learn, to be good students and good citizens,because they paid a price for you to have that desk to sit in and to learn and don’t ever forget it.”

In 2006 the VFW named Martha Cothren, "Teacher of the Year." In the 2005 - 2006 school year her classes sent over 1200 letters to troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. While we need more students like her's that understand the price of freedom, what we really need are more teacher's like Ms. Cothren who understand the price of freedom.