Our own Bill Ferguson -- former city school teacher, University of Maryland law student, intern in Dr. Alonso's office and one of the most prolific commenters here on InsideEd -- is one of 10 winners of the Obama inaugural committee's Ticket to History contest. He was among 250,000 people who submitted essays about what the inauguration means to him. The contest was a fundraiser in part; participants were given the option of donating to cover the cost of the inauguration. The winners each get two tickets to the inauguration. Bill was planning to go anyway, but now he'll have a better seat.

I wanted to post his essay here, but sadly, he doesn't have a copy. "In full blog fashion, I just wrote it in the text box and sent it through the online form," he said in an e-mail yesterday to me and Laura Vozzella, who wrote about his award in her column today (see the second page).

For now, suffice it to say that Bill's submission talked about his experience in Teach For America from 2005 to 2007, when he taught social studies at Vivian T. Thomas Medical Arts Academy. He promises he'll try to recreate what he wrote for us soon.

Congratulations, Bill!