La La Life: YADAPP

At Stuarts Draft High School, our SADD club (Students Against Destructive Decisions) is pretty awesome. Last year, SADD tackled the issue of texting while driving so well that our school won a $10,000 award! Pretty amazing. Well, the amazing faculty leader of the club couldn't go to YADAPP this year, so she asked me to join another SDHS teacher with two teams of students for the week long conference. What the heck is YADAPP (my thoughts exactly)? Well, YADAPP stands for Youth Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention Project. The kids ...and teachers...who attend go to seminars and meetings to learn how to help their community better battle drug and alcohol abuse, as well as other destructive decisions. The Sunday before we were set to depart for YADAPP, I have to admit, I wasn't too excited about giving up a week of my summer nor was I excited about waking up at 5am on a summer morning to ride in a bus for 2 hours to then sleep in a dorm room for a week. But all that complaining seems rather petty now, because the reward of attending this conference, especially with a team of four dedicated and enthusiastic kids, outweighs anything else. I had an amazing time. I was inspired by the excitement among the hundreds of youth there. The speakers were amazing. The joy in each session was amazing - we danced, we sang, we iggle wiggled, and we listened to "Lean on Me" about 50 times. It was awesome.

The conference was at Longwood University - such a beautiful school.

The kids getting ready to dance.

Not the best quality picture, because I was so far away, but this is Herman Boone. (Denzel played him in Remember the Titans - one of my favorite movies of all time!)

The theme was superheroes. Guess who made them pose like this?

I have no idea.

At the conference, each team created what YADAPP calls a STAN (strategies to act now) plan. In each plan, the students must attack an issue with a specific goal in mind to help prevent or better inform, etc. My team wanted to encourage safe sex, with an emphasis on preventing teen pregnancy and the spread of STDs. They were so bold with their focus and so prepared that WE WON! We won $200 to take back to our school to implement our plan. And if we prove we implemented it, we could go back next year and win more money! Exciting!

I would have to say one of the most memorable parts of the conferences was a mini-session we went to on making the right choices. About 15 people attended and were all seated in a classroom. Our presenter first made us write down our hopes and dreams on a sheet of paper. Then she handed out Uno cards. When we flipped our cards over, everyone who had a wild card took their hopes and dreams list to the front, balled it up and threw it on the floor. They were told to get out of the classroom, stand in the hallway along the wall and be quiet. One of the kids in my group, we will call him C, got a wild card. Our presenter came to me - I was sitting next to C - and told me to pick from 6 sheets of construction paper. I picked and read it - "Drug Overdose." She asked me how I know C, if I knew he did drugs, why I didn't prevent this from happening, why I didn't talk to C more about his troubles. Then, she makes me stare at his empty chair, telling me C isn't coming back. I almost burst into tears. My face was burning red, my stomach was churning. I was embarassed for being put on the spot and, even though I knew C was standing in the hallway, I felt grief and guilt for not helping more. Seeing my discomfort and hurt, my watery eyes, another girl in our group started to tear up. It was heart wrenching. She went on to others who "lost" a friend to the hallway - others who pulled sheets that said car accident, playing with guns, alcohol poisoning, etc. It reminded me of a young man in my class who was killed by gun violence during my second year teaching in Baltimore. We had to stare at his empty desk. We covered it in paper and wrote messages to him on it. His mother had to walk the stage at graduation and accept his diploma for him.

At the end of the presentation, after bringing the "lost" back in from the hallway and explaining to them what happened, our presenter told us her story. When her sons were 12 and 9, after the last day of the school year, the boys went out to play and ran into a new group of kids they never played with before. This group had figured out how to turn on the machinery at a construction site down the street. After asking the 12 year-old and 9 year-old to come with them to mess around on the site, the 9 year-old refused to go, but the 12 year-old called his little brother a "punk" and went with his new friends. The 9 year-old ran home. The 12 year went to the site, got on the back of a large truck that the other boys hot-wired, started up, and drove up an embankment. The boys drove too fast and the truck flipped. It flipped right onto the presenter's 12 year-old son and it burst into flames. The rest of the group of boys did not try to help, but ran. Four hours later, the young boy's body was found at the construction site. He died at the age of 12 because of one bad choice. Now, his mother travels the east coast urging other youth to be conscience of the consequences of each choice they make, because one bad choice could be the last choice. Her message was powerful and I don't think I will ever forget it. I wish she could speak to all the students in all of America - giving the same message, touching them the way she touch just the hundred or so she talked to at YADAPP.

Besides powerful messages like this one, we also got to hear from several amazing comedians, funny men who overcame great obstacles in their lives, turned themselves around, and now in the midst of their jokes, speak messages of hope and perseverance. And we ended the week with a hypnotist, who got about 3-4 young people under his spell, while a few others just played along, including one from my team.

Overall, the conference was awesome. I wish I could scoop up more kids - from Draft, from where I used to teach in Bmore - and take them to the conference. I would give up every week in my summer to touch even more kids, esp. my old students from MD, mainly because I don't think they get exposure to speakers and clubs like SADD club and so on.

Anyway...here are a few more pictures. : )