Thursday afternoon in Dillon, the most famous eighth-grader in America had to go to gym class at J.V. Martin Junior High. It is advanced physical education, for the best and brightest.
Ty'Sheoma Bethea is sure that.
Ty'Sheoma sat with Michelle Obama on Tuesday night in the U.S. Capitol, as President Barack Obama hailed the S.C. student during a speech for a letter she wrote to him. In that letter she asked for the same chance at a quality education, the same opportunity, as every other kid gets in the rich places.
She wrote of herself and her friends: "We are not quitters."
Ty'Sheoma has rightly become a national hero for standing up for herself and others.
She was taught how to stand up, to demand greatness from herself and others, by two people you might know.
In that gym class Thursday, an experienced teacher and Dillon native named Shirl Carter stood front and center. Carter, for eight years until 2004, taught gym at York's Harold C. Johnson Middle School and Hunter Street Elementary School. She went back to Dillon after that stretch in York because it is home, and she was a student in that very same Dillon school 30 years ago. She wanted every kid in her school to learn and dream.
So Carter taught Thursday in a gym with no heat. The kids dressed in a room without lockers and without heat. The weights used by every kid were hand-me-downs from the high school. It is a school that is mostly poor and mostly black. Carter, often the only white face in her gym when she teaches, said plainly over the telephone: "Color is not an issue for me. Ever. If I am the only Caucasian in the gym at any given time, so what? Kids want to learn."
Carter studied hard and became a teacher who changes lives. She taught and coached a little girl many years ago in Dillon named Dina Leach: Ty'Sheoma's mother.
"Fine student, good lady," said Carter of the mother of America's most famous eighth-grader. "Her daughter is terrific, too. Very hard working. Spirited."
On Thursday, Carter told Ty'Sheoma and every other kid in that school that has become famous -- infamous -- for being such a tired old building that shudders several times a day from passing trains, what she tells them every single day: "You matter. Do your best. I believe in you."
In York, Shirl Carter coached sports after school and had an eager youngster named Lindsay Gladden on her teams. Lindsay Gladden at York Comprehensive High School played three sports. At one time, she was the only white player on the basketball team and it mattered not at all to her or anybody else.
At Limestone College, Gladden studied to be a gym teacher. She wanted to be like Carter and her mother, Sarah Gladden, 26 years a gym teacher of students of all means and races and backgrounds at Lewisville Elementary School in Chester County.
Sarah Gladden said of her teaching style toward kids: "Believe in every one of them."
"My mother taught me every person is the same, color means nothing," Lindsay Gladden said. "Shirl Carter was the same way."
Lindsay Gladden's first job, at age 23, started in August. It is in Dillon at that same J.V. Martin Junior High. A school where so many students are of a different color than she, yet Lindsay Gladden didn't care if the color of the kid was green or purple. Carter, the coach who told her about the job opening, and Sarah Gladden, the mother, taught her what matters is hope.
Gladden had Ty'Sheoma in class during the fall semester.
"What a great kid, scrappy," Gladden said. "All my kids are great."
Gladden coaches junior varsity softball but supports the kids in academics and other sports. A few weeks ago, Gladden rode with the basketball team to a game at a school in Florence. The Dillon team left a gym and locker room without heat. The bus broke down. They finally arrived an hour away wearing uniforms that did not match, and were of different vintage. The players walked into a school gym with a public address sound system fit for a concert hall, new equipment on all sides, and enough heat to incubate newborns.
