Jim Freeman didn’t hesitate.
In September 2019, the students at Tully Elementary School in Louisville, Kentucky, were preparing for a field trip to Falls of the Ohio State Park, a place of narrow trails and 390-million-year-old fossil beds that wind through Indiana and Kentucky. One of the students uses a wheelchair, and that uneven terrain seemed like the perfect barrier to keep him from joining the outing.
Freeman didn’t see it that way. Instead of resigning himself to the boy having to look at photos of the trip the next day, he decided to carry him himself so he could make it across every difficult stretch alongside his classmates. No manual told him to do it. He did it because, to him, being a teacher also means making sure no one is left on the other side of the door when everyone else goes out to explore the world.
