Perseverance

During the months of May and June, we will be focusing on “Perseverance.” Perseverance means to demonstrate commitment, hard work, patience, and endurance. Perseverance is trying again and again.

You show perseverance when you ...

Give up your tv time to spend hours studying

Try a new sport that is very difficult but you don't give up

Have a learning disability but keep studying even when discouraged

Come from a home where there is fighting and unhappiness but you still try your best

Have missed a week of school but you work hard to catch up

Are at the end of a difficult race but you cross the finish line

Save money and make sacrifices to buy something

Spend hours practicing on your music

Study and work hard to raise your grade

People who persevered despite handicaps and disabilities

Beethoven (composer) - was deaf

Ray Charles (musician) - is blind

Thomas Edison (inventor) - had a learning problem

Albert Einstein (scientist) - had a learning disability

Terry Fox (runner) - is an amputee with cancer

Stevie Wonder (musician) - is blind

James Earl Jones (actor) - was a stutterer

Helen Keller (author) - was deaf and blind

Marlee Matlin (actress) - is deaf

Franklin D. Roosevelt (president) - was paralyzed from polio

Vincent Van Gogh (artist) - was mentally ill

Woodrow Wilson (president) - had a learning problem

Itzhak Perlman (concert violinist) - was paralyzed from the waist down

Stephen Hawking (physicist) - had Lou Gehrig's disease (of the nervous system)

Heroes and heroines

Susan B. Anthony was a women's rights activist who spent her entire life working for a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote.

Marie Curie was a physicist who published 32 scientific papers and continued to study sources of radioactivity over many years.

Amelia Earhart became famous as the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and as an advocate of aviation and women's rights.

Babe Didrikson Zaharias was a great American female athlete who excelled in many sports.

Benjamin Franklin was a leading scientist, inventor, publisher, and politician whose persistence, patience, and hard work paid off. He is on our $100 bill.

Wilma Randolph was an Olympics Gold medalist in track who was not able to walk properly as a child.

El Chino was the first Chinese matador in Spain.

Martin Luther King, Jr. worked very hard to lead the civil rights movement in the 1960's. He withstood prejudice and resistance to change.