So it used to be that MLK Day was a day off, not much else. Sure there was the obligatory speech from the principal over the announcements or a workshop in History, but really it was the day off of school that made it special.
Not so in City Year. We’ve been preparing for this weekend for the entire month, writing curriculum, planning journal entries and preparing an assembly for our middle school.
For the last week everything we’ve been running in class has been related to MLK and it’s spawned some very interesting discussions. The best, though, was when we ran a non-violence workshop on the day that we had two pairs of boys that had been in fights with each other and had a great discussion on the reasons why they had gotten into fights in the first place. They ended up the program with a dance party to “Eye of the Tiger” and left, if not friends, at least no longer enemies.
The multi-cultural assembly also was a lot of fun! We had Polynesian dancers, raps, songs, poems, speeches and lion and fan dances… I don’t think I was half as talented when I was 13. I didn’t think I was going to enjoy watching it three times in a row but it was surprisingly enjoyable.
But it was service that took the cake. We worked on Saturday and will work tomorrow too. For us MLK is “a day on, not a day off.” This means that we work- actually, organize- service projects that we run with external volunteers from all over Seattle.
Yesterday I took out blackberry brambles and weeds and planted 60 swordferns on a hill steep enough to provide some problems… even in my Tims. And I was lucky I had those, there were volunteers completely covered in mud by the time that they were done with the project.
But it was fun being filthy, because it meant that we had accomplished something. And all we had to do was look at the huge pile of weeds and the hillside full of ferns to see just what we had done.