June 2008

 

'Famous' Opens Thursday, June 5 at MHS PAC 
 

 

"It's a showcase of each kid's talent with a hop, skip, and jump into the next kids' talent and the audience will recognize selections of the production," said Monroe Youth Challenge Program Director Sunny Booker who voluntarily directed the musical.  "Most shows I have directed in Marathon seem to be homogenous. The variety of this show makes it exciting - more interesting," said Booker.

 'Famous' opens Thursday, June 5 at the Marathon High School in the newly constructed auditorium. This is the inaugural performance in the facility. The show starts at 7 p.m. Thursday, June 5 and repeats Friday, June 6 at 7 p.m. Tickets cost $10 for adults and $5 for students. General seating tickets may be bought in advance at Marathon High School or at the door if available.

 

Ileana Attends MYCP Annual Celebration

 

A highlight of the evening is that Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen came. She posed for pictures with students and reviewed half a dozen service learning projects before she congratulated Superintendent Randy Acevedo for supporting MYCP and doing a fantastic job with the youth of Monroe County. MYCP, a grass-roots non profit organization that runs programs on every school campus in the county, hosted its annual awards celebration to recognize community partners and outstanding student participants in Marathon.
 

 

 

Elementary Students Enjoy Bowling and Pizza
 

 

 

MYCP Leadership Students Host Remebrance Event

 

The Yom HaShoah program hosted by leadership students at Coral Shores High School was the culmination of a semester study on bullying, genocide, and the Holocaust to prevent school violence. Students watched movies about genocide, studied the Holocaust and attended Student Awareness Day in Miami where they sat with a survivor of the Holocaust. After their research students created a Yom HaShoah event at their school as a day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The Coral Shores Performing Arts Center was packed as leaders from the Keys Jewish Community Center and students lead their peers in education, remembrance, and personal commitment of non-violence.

 

For Plantation Tropical Preserve 

 

The Village of Islamorada contributed a fallen mahogany tree to the MYCP Leadership Class at Coral Shores. Three seniors used it to create benches for Plantation Tropical Preserve on Plantation Key. Leadership class students, Billy Hart, Matt O'Neil, and Tom Guigoue turned the tree into boards, rounded the edges, sanded it, and sealed it to use it for making their benches. The benches were then placed at Plantation Tropical Preserve, which is near Tavernier Creek Bridge. In this picture, Coral Shores Senior Tom Guigoue is shown relaxing on one of the benches he, Hart and O'Neil made.

 

Kelley Greenman, Truman Scholar

 

An upcoming senior at Washington University, Kelley Greenman was recently awarded the Truman Scholarship. While many United States presidents are immortalized in structures of bricks and mortar or marble, the memory of the 33rd president continues in a living memorial: the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation which was created by an act of Congress.

 

The Act authorized the Foundation to "award scholarships to persons who demonstrate outstanding potential for and who plan to pursue a career in public service," and to conduct a nationwide competition to select Truman scholars.
 

The Truman Scholarship Foundation remains committed to encouraging future "change-agents" of America. Many of those chosen as scholars go on to serve in public office, as public defenders, leaders of non-profit organizations, and educators.

That's just the path this 2005 graduate of Marathon High School is on. 

 

Kelley remembers well her days of helping her mother Judy Greenman, the founder of Monroe Youth Challenge Program. Kelley says, "In high school I was in the first STARS mentoring program and did administrative work to help bring Challenge Day to the Keys." She attended the first Challenge Day, plus four or five others and then went to Next Step in California.

Those early leadership experiences are where Kelley started to realize, "that the service component was important. Through STARS mentoring I learned that's what I want to do," she said in an interview from Hungary where she was on vacation visiting family.

When she returns to the states she plans to take on a world-impacting issue of global warming while on internship with the United Nations Environment Program in Washington, D.C. She has been selected to work with a professional staff for two months to create a youth network for climate change action in North America.

From there, she is set to finish her bachelor's in environmental science and then plans to take a year off for public service. The next two years she plans to work in D.C. in the environmental arena before she applies her Truman Scholarship for graduate school at Washington University in St. Louis. Her focus is on a joint degree with a master's in environment science and public policy specifically doing international environmental policy on climate change.

In the picture above, Kelley is one of the Truman Scholars who gathered in May in Independence, Missouri, home of the Truman Library. Part of their activities was to work in small teams to present solutions to policy challenges posed to them by the Truman Foundation. In this picture, Kelley's group proposed solutions to foster care issues in Massachusetts to a panel of judges. 
 

sunny.booker@keysschools.com

http://www.monroe.k12.fl.us/mycp