Like many people, we do not take Martin Luther King Day "off;" instead we chose to honor his legacy through service. This year, our history teacher, Gus, had students listen to King's most famous "I Have a Dream" speech and then led a discussion on social justice and preserving/promoting rights. Students discussed the roles of bystanders and collaborators, and the differences between empathy, pity, and sympathy.
In our dorm program, students made three pans of lasagna for the Chittenden Emergency Food Shelf and forty bags of trail mix to take to COTS family shelter in Burlington. Through our continued connection with COTS and the food shelf, students are learning about the extreme challenges of poverty, homelessness, and hunger in our community. Ask King said, "Everybody can be great ... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love."