Students react to Obama's challenge for school: no excuses

By Karen Romero

Almost two months have passed since President Obama gave his speech to American students and Antonio Jenkins doesn’t remember anything about it. “I was in the theater of my school that day, but wasn’t putting to much attention to his words,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins, 18, is an African-American student at El Colegio Charter School in Minneapolis and, although he admires Barack Obama, he didn’t care about the speech that challenged students to let nothing get in the way of doing well in school.

On the other hand, even though Andrea Alarcon, whose first language is Spanish, didn’t understand all of what Obama said in his speech, she paid close attention when she heard the President talking about Jasmine Perez during the speech, which the president gave Sept. 8 at Wakefield High School in Virginia.

“I understood that Jasmine didn’t speak a word of English when she got here, in this country and now she is an important researcher in her community. What Obama said made me think about my goals and the reason why I am here: to pursue my education dreams,” she said.

Obama’s speech inspired Alarcon to continue fighting for her education. “Now I know that even the most important people in this nation had to overcome difficult problems to get where they are now,” Alarcon said the week after the speech.

Now, two months later, she still remembers what she heard that day. Alarcon said it’s hard to stay focused on school sometimes. “But I remember his words … when his message comes to my mind (it) makes me feel that I can achieve whatever I want in life,” said Alarcon.

The speech provoked different reactions in students. For some of them, the speech was an amazing message that encourages them to study harder, but for others, the speech was only a repetition of something of what they already knew.

“As Obama said, there are a lot of opportunities for students in school, but sometimes we don’t have the enough information of how to get to those resources,” said Adriana Barrera, also a student at El Colegio.

Even though the speech caused diverse reactions in different people, one thing is for sure, teenagers are the future of the country and they have to be educated.