Sometimes, I feel I gotta get away
Bells chime, I know I gotta get away
… I know sometimes I must get out in the light
… the kids are alright.
"The Kids are Alright," by The Who
Every time you look at the news it seems police are arresting several young men as suspects in a crime or – even worse – cleaning another young person’s body off the pavement and investigating his murder. One life snuffed out, another spinning down the sink.
We get reports like that every week, month after month, year after year. It’s easy to see how newspaper people can become jaded. And sometimes it seems like that’s all there is – because the bad news is so bad it can be hard to see anything else. Like one grumpy old editor I used to work with said, "When you’re driving down the highway and get a flat tire, you don’t get out and admire the three that still have air in them."
But it’s there. In the last few weeks there has been a flood of it. All you have to do is look. But just in case you missed it, I wanted to point it out so that you can say, like Roger Daltrey and The Who, "The Kids are Alright!"
Start with Dyarah Powell, 16, AnutMeri Christopher, 15, and Amal Bryson, 15, three Crucian dancers from the Music in Motion School of Higher Dance Education, who auditioned for and were accepted in an intensive summer workshop at Dance Theater of Harlem in New York.
For those who aren’t familiar, Dance Theater of Harlem is big. Really big. In dance, it’s about as big as it gets in the United States. For three of our kids to try out among thousands from around the world, and all three to get accepted, that’s huge.
Now look at the St. Thomas Unity Choir. Thirty of our kids from Ivanna Eudora Kean High and Charlotte Amalie High went to London for the World Strides Heritage Choir Festival. They sang before a panel of music professionals, competing against choirs from all over the globe and brought home a gold.
And most recently, St. Croix Central High School junior Angelique Flemming performed at the National Poetry Out Loud semifinals. On Tuesday she was one of 53 students from all over the United States who made it to the semifinals.
And it’s not just singing and dancing and poetry.
Recently 14 of our brightest young people, undergrads studying math and science at the University of the Virgin Islands, competed among hundreds of sharp minds at the annual Emerging Researchers National Conference in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics in Washington, D.C. One of them, Jamila Martin, a UVI senior majoring in applied mathematics, won first place for her presentation on the nutrient concentration of the bioluminescent lagoon on St. Croix. I have trouble even understanding what that means, and she won a national award for it!
And don’t forget the youngsters. At Yvonne Milliner-Bowsky Elementary School, 19 students were inducted into the district’s first National Elementary Honor Society chapter, which recognizes not only high grades but also ongoing community service efforts. These bright kids are all fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders with a grade point average of 3.75 or higher. Give ’em a few years and they’ll be up there competing with Jamila and the others at UVI, and showing the world what they do.
That’s 67 of our kids competing on the world stage and often winning. And that’s just in the last month. And there’s probably more I’m missing. And it’s not just the kids who are succeeding. Behind them is that whole proverbial village – parents, teachers, friends, community members – who are helping and encouraging them along the way. They belong to all of us.
Whether they took top honors or not is almost immaterial. The point is, they were out there trying and reaching heights that most of us don’t. That’s not just good for them. It’s good for all of us in the territory.
Sometimes on a little chain of islands it can be hard to remember that the world is a big place. Each time one of these great kids goes out and shows what they’re capable of, it broadens the horizons for the rest of our youth. A student doesn’t have to be interested in dance, or science, or singing, to look at what they’ve done and think, "I could do that too." When they see an announcement, maybe a theater program in New York or a sports camp in Florida, and instead of shrugging, they might think, "That could be me."
Every time one of our kids succeeds, it makes the world a little bigger for all of us. Maybe we don’t say it enough, maybe we get lost in all the bad news, let the dark stuff overwhelm us. But it’s there, it’s something we can be proud of.
The kids are alright.
