‘If Obama can do it, then we can do anything’

West Preparatory Institute teacher Kimberly McGee always keeps inspirational messages and the deeds of history-makers in front of her students.

Her honors geometry class got an extra dose of both Tuesday morning as they watched Barack Obama, the nation's first black president, give his inaugural speech.

The sophomores were mesmerized.

"Wasn't that powerful?" asked McGee, who teaches at the public K-12 school near Martin Luther King and Lake Mead boulevards.

The school's enrollment is split almost evenly between blacks and Hispanics. In a mock election held last fall, 99 percent of students voted for Obama, Principal Michael Barton said.

Students often are told that dreams are possible, Barton said. "Now they know it."

Obama's example of personal achievement is setting his students up for the future, the principal said.

Tahmineh Spencer, 15, said she was ready to pursue a career in either the law or engineering.

"I feel like if Obama can do it, then we can do anything we want if we put our minds to it," she said.

"It's pretty cool to see the first African-American to become president," said Abraham Felix, 15. "I'm glad to be a part of history."

Felix, who is of Mexican descent, said he looks forward to seeing the first Hispanic president "hopefully in my lifetime."

Not all students in the Clark County School District got to watch the inauguration.

One mother complained to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that her daughter missed it because it conflicted with a math class at Silverado High School. She said the math teacher downplayed the event as just the start of another presidential term. The mother asked not to be named because she did not want to embarrass her teenage daughter.

"It just struck me as wrong," the mother said.

District spokesman Michael Rodriguez was unaware of the Silverado situation but said some schools might not have had enough TVs to allow everyone to watch it at the same time. To avoid disrupting academic schedules, some schools also might have arranged for students to watch recordings of the speech in their social studies classes, Rodriguez said.