President to commend graduate student who didn't speak English at first

"Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up"

"She worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school"

President Barack Obama will address the nation's schoolchildren at 11am Nashville time today. In his remarks, he will commend a Texas woman who started school with no English but has gone on to graduate school in public health:

Where you are right now doesn't have to determine where you'll end up. No one's written your destiny for you. Here in America, you write your own destiny. You make your own future. That's what young people like you are doing every day, all across America.

Young people like Jazmin Perez, from Roma, Texas. Jazmin didn't speak English when she first started school. Hardly anyone in her hometown went to college, and neither of her parents had gone either. But she worked hard, earned good grades, got a scholarship to Brown University, and is now in graduate school, studying public health, on her way to being Dr. Jazmin Perez.

Photo by ed peterson. Licensed under Creative Commons.