Local opinion: Under-reported youth accolades

Re: the Feb. 12 article “Students help patients in need.”

Bless you Arizona Daily Star. Bless you Sunnyside School District teacher Cesar Gutierrez. And bless the eight students who traveled from Desert View High School to Peru recently to outfit those in need with prosthetic legs designed and built in their classrooms!

I bless the “Star” for presenting this wonderful story of American youth in action on a global scale. This doesn’t happen often these days. Usually teenage gangster stories dominate the news.

I’m inclined to think that wonderfully uplifting stories about American students doing good in the world are terribly under-reported. Hop aboard the “Star” good news bandwagon, news mavens, and give us youthful models to emulate and salute.

Some time ago I asked my wife, “Why don’t we have a good news TV channel?” She simply answered, “Well, duhhh, nobody would watch that channel!” Humm... I wonder if she’s right in that assertion. Me? I’ve had enough gloom and doom reporting domination.

Tears come to my eyes as an ex-Peace Corps Volunteer and high school journalism teacher in Micronesia, Tucson and the North Shore of Boston. I realized that the “Star” had given up precious front-page space to a wonderfully compelling and inspiring high school story.

From the bottom of my heart thank you for this piece on the precision manufacturing and drafting classes of teacher Cesar Gutierrez.

Okay, now, dear reader — what should you do if you agree with my dissertation on under-reported good deeds performed by youthful Americans?

If I may be so bold, talk to friends and acquaintances in your neighborhoods and ask them if they have information on good news stories featuring young people.

Reporters, apparently, aren’t engaged in this task so put on your “good citizen cowboy hats” and lasso up as many salutary depictions of laudable acts of young folks as you can find.

I’m an old turkey (81-plus) who’s served in the U.S. Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands with the Peace Corps, served as a draftee in the Army during the Tet Offensive, taught at an inner-city high school in Tucson (Amphitheater) and taught at a private school on the North Shore of Boston (Glen Urquhart School).

I recount these experiences to illustrate the fact I’ve “been around the block” regarding far-ranging and unique teaching stints. Hope this gives me some validity in your understanding what I’m trying to convey.

These experiences, at each stop of my 50 years working as an educational professional, provided me with exceptional examples of kids who richly-deserved to be saluted by the communities in which they lived.

We often hear the chant, “Make a difference in the world.” Here’s your chance.