MLK Celebration: Part Three - Youth Leadership Academy for Kings and Queens @FairfieldU

(This is actually part four, but I'm an English guy, so the numbers aren't necessarily a priority for me).

Phew.

Last night, Dr. Marcelle Haddix, Phil Haddix, Cedric Bolton, Steve Mahon, Tanya Baker, Attallah Sheppard and Alisha Smith spent an hour on NWP Radio discussing the history of Writing Our Lives and the movement of youth conferences from Syracuse to Connecticut to New York City. The show aired at 7 p.m., and when I got home, I immediately started on the Youth Leadership Academy presentation at Fairfield University for the 110 middle school young people who will be attending. We will be in Faber Hall and that crowd is twice the size of any that I've ever worked with in that location. It is going to be tight, but we go this.

This year's theme: Writing Our Lives as Kings and Queens. Once again I will be hosting with Attallah Sheppard, and I've invited a whole city of special guests to speak: my students, my colleagues, administrators, and anyone who responded to my All-Call. My goal is to ask middle school students to be be Martin Luther Kings and Queens, where they will take a pet-peeve or frustration and turn it into something that is worth expressing in proactive ways.

I have designed a workshop that I hope I'll be able to use in other venues for kids, as I found spectacular crowns to put on the heads of all my guests (the photo above models two of them).

So, today will conclude MLK Celebration week 2017 for me, and now I can concentrate on my dossier due this week and all that grading. I have a conference call after the event this afternoon, and then I think I will return home and simply crash. I can feel. I'm wiped out.

Let our kingdom/queendom soar today!