We were very fortunate last week to be invited to participate once again in the opening day of the IdeaFestival: Thrivals 6.0.  Dr. Nat Irvin, Thrivals founder and Professor at the University of Louisville College of Business, has been kind enough to include St. Francis in this event every year since it's been in Louisville.  Professor Irvin is himself a brilliant, innovative thinker who not only teaches at the U of L College of Business, but has a Ph.D. in Music Composition as well.   We brought the School Committee and other students who signed up from the High School (23 students in all) and the entire 8th grade class from Goshen.  The theme this year was:  "The Quest: Transforming Our Communities."   There were a number of speakers that day, but three of them really stood out in my mind and I'd like to share with you a bit about what they had to say.

The first speaker of the day was Macarthur Fellow (a.k.a. "genius grant" recipient) Majora Carter.  Majora grew up in the South Bronx and after college and graduate school became interested in urban revitalization.  She said that when she left for college, all she wanted was to get out of the Bronx and never come back.  However, when she went to graduate school, she found herself in the place that many young graduate students find themselves: back at home due to lack of funds.  Living back in the Bronx made her start to think about all that was wrong with the idea that the smart people from such neighborhoods should just want to escape; she decided that instead, she had a responsibility to help make the neighborhood a place that people would want to live.  As such, she took on a major role in "greening" the South Bronx, starting with a modest project of cleaning up a dump on the waterfront and eventually writing a grant to turn it into a waterfront park.  She moved on from there to greening the roadways and looking at economic revitalization.  She also focused on job training so that residents could complete these projects and could build a future for themselves.  Now she is concentrating on creating economic engines in the community such as an entrepreneurial catalyst center called a "Tech Meetup," and replacing liquor stores and check-cashing establishments with retail and grocery stores.  In addition, she serves as a consultant on how to help disadvantaged neighborhoods all over the country transform themselves into communities where residents want to live.  She is a big believer in revitalization happening through and by the residents of a community, rather than having outside forces/people come in and begin "doing something to" a community.  Her words were incredibly inspiring, particularly because she started doing this work when she was quite young and without any real financial support.  She has definitely made a difference and her work is spawning additional progress in many other communities.

The second speaker was Zev Dickstein, who is the youngest political campaign manager in the country, at age 11.  Throughout my career in education, I have attended several large conferences each year, and I must say that Zev is one of the more amazing speakers I have ever heard.  Not only was he completely at ease speaking to this large crowd, but he was funny and inspiring as well.  His story is that from a very young age (the womb? as if 11 is not a very young age?!), he'd been interested in history and politics and tended to read non-fiction on the subject and listen to NPR.  He got his parents to take him to volunteer on political campaigns from the age of six onward.  Over the years, he became a known and respected presence on the campaign rounds in Cambridge, MA, where he lives, with experience in phone banking, canvassing, and analyzing campaign data.  He also spearheaded a petition (culminating in his speaking appearance before the local school board) to put salad bars in local public schools like his own. Last spring, a candidate for the school board asked him to run her campaign, an endeavor in which he is presently occupied.   His advice to the students was "Show up.  Just go do it".  Conventional wisdom says an 11-year-old can't run a political campaign, but he put one foot in front of the other and started racking up experience, until one day, he was an expert.  The small-world aspect of this story is that it turns out that Zev's father is from Louisville; he is Jan (now known as Stuart) Dickstein and went to St. Francis School from 1st-9th grade! Patrick Donovan (who was also at Thrivals as a chaperone), Michael Mahoney and I all knew him, as he was Goshen Class of '78!  We were then fortunate that Zev and his family came to visit both the Goshen and Downtown Campuses in the days after Thrivals, where he was of course treated like a celebrity by all the students who saw his talk. 

The final speaker who really caught my attention was Ron Finley, known as the "guerilla gardener".  Ron is from South LA, and, with similar sentiments as Majora Carter, became obsessed with the fact that healthy, real food was simply not available to residents of the poorest neighborhoods in the U.S., like his own.  He also was gripped by the knowledge that this lack of healthy food has been a major contributing factor as to why our poor are unhealthy, stricken in disproportionate numbers by the obesity epidemic and Type II diabetes.  His style is bold and unfiltered because, he says, he's angry at the state of things and the fact that we have allowed this to happen in the U.S. and speaking politely about it is not getting the job done.  His solution was simply to start planning food plants all over his neighborhood, and ultimately to get the neighborhood involved in growing its own food.  I loved the first thing he did with the students:  he handed out a bunch of junk food snacks, and of course many kids started eating them.  Then he asked kids to Google some of the main ingredients and then stand up at the microphone and tell us what they were (the words were undecipherable in most cases) and what kind of side effects they have.  As you can imagine, the side effects were hideous, and this exercise really had an impact on our kids.  His point was if you can't read or understand the ingredients, then don't eat it.  He left kids with the message, "You gotta have a code: what do you stand for?" and told us that his greatest fear was living a life without meaning.   His forthright, brash style, while disarming (and occasionally a little offensive) really got through to kids - they knew he was dead serious and that he was extremely passionate about what he was saying. 

What I love most about Thrivals is that, each year, it exposes our students to ordinary people who have done extraordinary things, furthering the theme we reiterate with them as much as possible:  while the world may have many problems and challenges, one person truly can make a difference, so choose your passion and get to work!   Hearing these real-life stories never fails to inspire us all. 

October 12th

"Our Good Earth" Gala 

October 24th - 25th                

Parent -Teacher Conferences (G & D)

Goshen - NO SCHOOL Thursday & Friday 

Downtown - NO SCHOOL Friday only

October 31st

Professional Development - NO SCHOOL (Preschool)

November 1st

Conferences - NO SCHOOL (Preschool)