Totally Ky: Red Ribbon Week 2015

Happy Tuesday everyone it's not Tuesday and Happy Red Ribbon Week!

Today was my second year giving a speech to my old elementary school and my little sister's current elementary school for red ribbon week. If you are not familiar with it I give a better explanation than I am currently capable of in this post of my speech from last year.

Formatting this is hopeless I give up

Good morning Whitman cougars, my name is Kayla Graham and this is my little sister Ella. Who remembers me from last year? Last year I had the privilege of coming down here and talking to you guys for red ribbon week and I have this honor once again. The problem with doing this two years in a row is I have to come up with a whole new speech. Before I get to it I want to tell you a little bit about myself in case you forgot. I went here to Whitman from kindergarten to sixth grade. Some of my favorite teachers are still here teaching you guys and they deserve a shout out for putting up with me. Ms. Segars was my sixth-grade teacher, Ms. Watson was my fourth-grade teacher, Ms. Barret was my third-grade teacher and now she’s my little sister's first-grade teacher, and Ms. Kemp was my Kindergarten teacher. After Whitman I went to Innovation Middle for 7^th and 8^th grade and now I’m at Madison High School completing my 12^th year of school. I’m going to be 18 in a couple months and my favorite color is blue. Who else likes blue? Good, some of you are paying attention.

Now maybe we should talk about who I’m dressed as. Can you guys guess? And can you guess what my favorite book is? My favorite book is about a little boy who never grew up. When I was little I would read this version of the book done by Disney and when I got older I read the original version by a man named J.M Barrie. Did you guys know he wrote Peter Pan? And that it was actually a play first that he turned into a novel? Then Disney liked it so much they took the story, changed it a little, and made movies and books about it. One of my favorite lines from Peter Pan, the version J.M Barrie wrote is, “Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough.”

I don’t know if you guys remember but last year I told you about how hard it was for me to learn how to read? Did anyone else have trouble learning to read? Or maybe you had trouble with math? Or learning how to ride a bike or hit a baseball? Has anyone ever been frustrated or mad because they had a hard time learning how to do something? I was there. I was where you guys are now. When I was in kindergarten, where are the kindergarteners?, when I was in Mrs. Kemp’s kindergarten class I had a really hard time learning how to read. It just wasn’t something I could understand easily. So I hated it because it was hard and I was getting teased for it. I was that kid who couldn’t read as well as the other kids. I absolutely hated feeling that way. I wanted to give up every day. It was just too hard I didn’t want to do it.

Do you know what convinced me to try? “I will act in such a way that I will be proud of myself and others will be proud of me too.” It was the “others” part that made me want to really try to read. I wanted my mom and Ms. Kemp to be proud of me. It took so much work, let me tell you. It took a lot of practice and a lot of time. But once I set my mind to it, once I really committed myself to this goal I started to make some progress. By the end of kindergarten, I was still struggling but I was at the same reading level of the other kids. And as I started climbing up the ladder of grades I got better and better until it got to the point that I was winning awards for English, which is reading and writing. I remember this one time I came home with a math award and an English award. My mom was most proud of the English award because she knew I worked really hard for it. Unlike the award in English, the math award came pretty easy to me. It was the English award the proved to me that all of my hard work learning to read was worth it. I could have given up. I could have given up every day and pushed that book aside. But every morning I came to school and raised my right hand. “I came to school to learn and I will learn. I will have a good day.” I remember sometimes I would change “good” into “great” or “fantastic” because I thought I was cool.

“Dreams do come true, if only we wish hard enough.” “I will learn” and “I will be proud of myself and others will be proud of me too” I used to hate reading. Now I love it. I love reading so much that I want to write stories. I want to give the feeling to someone that I get when I read a good book. This is my dream. And if I want to live this dream I have to make good choices. I have to do good in school because I want to go to college, I want to continue my education and get a degree in creative writing so that I can write books that I can be proud of. I also have to stay away from drugs and other things that can harm me and set me back from my dream. I am chasing this dream. And yes I get tired of running sometimes but I’m not the kind of person who gives up. If your dream is important enough to you, you will chase it to the ends of the earth.

I’m here every day to pick up my sister so if you see me say hi. Or if you have a question for me feel free to come up and ask. I promise I won’t bite. Thank you guys so much for having me and listening to me ramble on and on. I hope I get to do this again next year.

Until next time,
Totally Ky