6th Annual YES Conference a HUGE Success!

This past Wednesday, nearly 200 middle school student leaders from all 19 Howard County middle schools came together to hone their leadership skills and learn more about the county's ongoing community-wide initiative, Choose Civility, that promotes respect, empathy, consideration and tolerance in Howard County.

Again this year, I had the privilege of serving as the MC of this outstanding program. I had fun warming up the students by doing a group energizer called the Boom-Bang Orchestra, introducing the keynote speakers Marcy Leonard (Hammond High School Principal) and Courtney Macavinta (Respect Institute President) and sharing some thoughts about the Fun Theory. The Keynote speakers did an outstanding job helping our middle school students think about their own "brand" responsibility and the meaning of respect as it applies to their development as leaders.

Six years ago, a dedicated group of middle school educators from three Howard County middle schools (Clarksville, Elkridge Landing and Murray Hill) and Lisa Boarman began the Youth Empowerment Summit bringing together nearly 100 students to learn leadership skills and develop plans to help improve their schools. It is so exciting to see how this program has expanded and is now an important leadership training program for all 19 middle schools.

As you know, providing middle school students with the skills necessary to identify and solve real-life problems is a very important task. It helps to focus their abundant energy in a positive direction. In addition, leadership skills are useful skills for success that can be adapted to most situations our students will face in the future.

After talking to several of my WLMS students who attended the YES event this week, I know the day was a huge success and they are motivated to help improve our school in the coming months. YES!

I want to thank my wife, Julie, for helping to start the first YES program and continuing her behind the scenes organization to make this event possible. I also want to thank Lisa Boarman for her support of this program and all of the other middle school counselors for inviting me to be apart of YES again this year. Also, thanks to Ron Nicodemus and the other county partners that supported our summit this year.