Students’ heroes honored at Memorial

Sure, Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne wear cool suits and use crazy gadgets to fight bad guys on the big screen, but in the real world, kids and teenagers need real life heroes to look up to. For students at Memorial Junior High School, there is no shortage of heroes — people who put others before themselves and make a difference in students’ lives.

At Memorial’s second annual Hero Day on May 16, seventh-grade students read personal essays they wrote about someone special in their lives. Eleven students were selected to share their essays in front of a crowd of hundreds. Although speaking in front of a large crowd can be daunting for students, they each had a hero or teacher standing with them to help them through it.

Students invited their heroes to Memorial to show their appreciation and to honor their heroes’ dedication. An entire section of the gymnasium bleachers was filled with heroes.

Kim Cazzetto, an English teacher at Memorial, organized the event for the second straight year and started planning it soon after last year’s Hero Day ended. In September, she and Principal Anthony Mignella decided to have the event in mid-May so students wouldn’t be overwhelmed with this assignment so close to the state assessments.

“Hearing our students share their beautiful personal essays is a rare experience for a teacher,” Cazzetto said. “It brings with it a feeling of pride. It takes great courage to actually thank someone for being a positive influence in your life; it takes even more courage to share it with more than 400 people.”

Naima Alakham wrote her essay about Kimberly Thomas, who runs the Sparkle Empowerment Program for Girls, of which Alakham has been a member of for the last nine months.

“If we aren’t doing well and we’ve had a rough day you comfort us and listen to us,” Alakham said about Thomas. “When we are down, you give us motivational words to get us back on our feet.”

Thomas said she was notified of her honor two weeks before the event and when she read the essay for the first time, it touched her heart. She added that she fought back tears at the assembly when Alakham was reading aloud.