Maliah Harris is twelve years old and a driven, interested local middle school student who followed her dreams this summer straight to the nation’s capital in Washington D.C. Harris joined three other local middle schoolers, Abigail Lacow, Kenny Wilson, and James Lofthouse in the Envision Junior National Young Leaders Conference for a week-long learning experience, tours of the national monuments, and bonding with like-minded students from across the country.
Nominated by their English teacher, Courtney Chapman, the Fallon students were part of a group of 260 students that stayed in Maryland just outside of D.C. During the Leadership conference, students took part in projects addressing social issues where they were challenged to work together to develop solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our day.
Maliah said that her group bonded quickly but was not without conflict within their ranks which gave students an opportunity to work through real communication issues. “Really there were too many of us in the group,” she said, “but we had decided we all wanted to work together and in the end we were successful.” The 260 students were divided into smaller groups who all worked through their projects on Tuesday, gathering all together on Thursday to make their presentations. Maliah’s group was awarded the “Best Presentation” certificate after their work was completed.
For completing the program, she was also awarded a Certificate of Achievement for her “dedication to educational achievement, the strength of character, and leadership.” In addition, now that she is an alumnus of the program, she is now eligible to continue participating in the programs every summer and is already saving up for her trip next summer.
As if the program was not exciting enough, she also ended up in the emergency room a couple days in, suffering from a bad case of swimmer’s ear after the flight to D.C. She said the counselors were so good to her and helpful and took care of her during that entire ordeal.
In addition to the group project, students took part in a large group exercise where they participated in a mock election, filling the roles of President, Vice-President, and cabinet positions; Maliah was named as a member of the media. Organizers presented various possible scenarios for the students to practice using the leadership skills they had been developing. During one situation, a scenario involving a nuclear power plant explosion was posed to the students and they had to choose between various possible solutions, taking into consideration the possible side-effects and unintended consequences of their potential choices. Maliah was tasked with interviewing the “Vice-President” about the situation and said the whole exercise was eye-opening.
“I feel like I should run for President,” she said. “I have my whole life planned out, I want to go to the Florida Institute of Technology and be an engineer for NASA.”
Maliah is involved in student council and had the hard lesson of losing her first run for a student body office. She had to write and deliver a speech and while she did not win said she was “moved that people voted for me.” She said all that experience helped her as she prepared for the trip to the leadership conference.
Part of that preparation early this summer included running a lemonade stand to raise money for the trip. Her grandpa helped out with the cost of the plane ticket, but she was able to raise the money to pay for the tuition and all her spending money. “I was really surprised by how much support people give. Larry Barker posted pictures of her lemonade stand and she instantly sold out. “I really love how the whole community came together to help me with this dream.”
She recommends the Washington tour for chaperones as well and says her mom is planning to go next year as a chaperone. The organization provided separate trips for the parents who attended, including transportation to all the tours and events that were scheduled.
The best part of the trip for Maliah, in spite of how much she enjoyed the leadership portion and the bonding with students from other states, was the science museum. “There was this exhibit that measured how much energy each thing in the exhibit took to run it,” she said, “and the space exhibits with the displays of the planets in order with all their moons and the Milky Way, I really want to go to that again.”
The most interesting observation she made about the trip came during their stop at the White House. Maliah said there was a large group of people protesting for Cuba and one of the women took a microphone and began addressing the students in Maliah’s group, directly telling them that as future leaders of our country they needed to take action now to support Cuba. She was fairly aggressive, and it was interesting to Malia that an adult was calling out the young students in her group. “The President wasn’t even there,” she said, “I feel like they could have done more or something different to actually be heard. Basically, they were just yelling at the White House. It was cool to see an actual protest, but for her to say that to us and we can’t really do anything.”
All in all, Maliah enjoyed the experience and plans to return next year. She said the organizers were fun but strict. During their trip to the monuments on the National Mall, she said there was a saxaphone player who was so amazing she had to sneak off to give him a $5 bill.
Between Larry Barker giving to Maliah, and Maliah giving to the jazz player, and the organizers giving their time and talent to kids across the country, it’s enough to restore some optimism to a troubled nation in a troubled time.
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