“All right already,” I said to the inanimate object, my cellphone.
I must have hit that snooze button five or six times.
I am a night owl, for sure, and waking up at 6 a.m. was a little early for me, especially on a Saturday.
I am not complaining, though.
I got to Lower Lake High School just before 8 a.m. and grabbed a water bottle from the cafeteria where the students were congregated.
As I figured out where I was supposed to go, a girl waved to me and smiled. I recognized her as a student from an AP English class I spoke to a while back.
I was lugging around a big cardboard box of materials for the “Girls in Careers Workshop.”
So Laura came over and helped me carry the box to the classroom. We talked on the way there about her plans for the future and that she is interested in science.
“Where do you want to go to college?” I asked her.
She told me that it didn”t really matter to her where she went to college, but that she is just so excited to get the chance to attend.
Laura will be the first in her family to go to college.
Ashley greeted me in the classroom. She is in the AmeriCorps program and volunteered to be my assistant that day. She kept track of the time, activities and handed materials to the girls who attended.
I only wished I could have taken her with me as my personal assistant for my every day life.
I wandered over to the new gym during a break and watched the girls participating in an activity through the large glass windows in the hallway.
“Are you Mandy?” I heard a man”s voice saying.
I told him I was.
“I just want to say thank you,” he said.
I asked him what he was thanking me for and he explained that I wrote an article about his family and some help they needed while he was serving in the military in Afghanistan.
I knew exactly who he was then. I gave him a hug and told him I was the one who should say “thank you,” and I did say it, a bunch.
A feeling of goodness filled the hallways and there seemed to be hope all around.
Healthy Start Site Supervisor Gina Dickson and Program Specialist with the Lake County Office of Education, Tammy Serpa, are heroes for making that necessary workshop possible.
The girls were amazing.
I met a girl who had already written a book and I watched another girl, Angela, take detailed notes as I spoke. She asked questions about the field of journalism and advice on what employers look for.
The keynote speaker, Venus Opal Reese, Ph.D, brought tears to my eyes as she spoke, not at the girls, but to them.
A mom walked in toward the end of the presentation and pointed to her daughter and then to her watch, indicating it was time to go.
The pre-teen scowled and silently mouthed the words, “No, it”s not over yet.”
The presence of the woman who came all the way to Lake County from Texas, as a volunteer, was immense.
The sense of empowerment the girls appeared to feel at that time was an immeasurable gift given by educators who obviously and genuinely care.
At the end of the day students surrounded Reese and hugged her.
The once homeless woman, now the proud recipient of two masters degrees and a Ph.D, gave the girls real tools to use in their world.
This type of program needs to continue in Lake County.
When the day closed out I was presented with a beautiful certificate complete with a graphic of “Rosie the Riveter.”
But as I said to the brave Lake County man who went to Afghanistan, I should be the one saying “thank you.”
Thank you to Gina, Tammy, the girls and Venus.
I certainly learned a lot in school on Saturday.
Mandy Feder is the Managing Editor at Lake County Publishing. She can be reached at mandyfeder@yahoo.com or 263-5636 ext. 32. Follow on Twitter @mandyfeder1.
