Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2005. Mattie was almost three years old and this was very typical of Mattie. If I was in the kitchen, he wanted to be there too! Don't you just love the impish look on his face?
Quote of the day: Sometimes you have to take a half step back to take two forward. ~ Vince McMahon
On January 22, Mattie's school has asked us to participate in their new colloquium. The nature of the colloquium is to inspire common good and to encourage high school students to think beyond themselves. Around 20 different non-profit groups are coming in to meet with the students. Each of us are assigned a classroom, and students can choose to attend our 45 minute sessions.
I have to admit that this age group is not my favorite to teach or interact with. So I have been truly struggling on how to occupy the 45 minute sessions, since I know that a simple PowerPoint and lecture won't work! This age group prefers active engagement and participation. Therefore, we have strategized role plays to highlight some of the psychosocial issues children with cancer and their families face and I am in the process of creating two group exercises. One which involves a matching game to determine the facts about childhood cancer and the other is a team competition to brainstorm the best and most achievable ways to get teenagers involved in our Foundation to promote awareness about childhood cancer and raise funds for us.
In addition, I debated for quite some time regarding how to summarize Mattie Miracle for them. Certainly we could talk about it, but I concluded it would be better to develop a short video highlighting who we are. So initially I thought the video would be for this venue, but given the amount of time it takes to create a video, I decided to make a tenth anniversary video instead. A video that highlights our accomplishments and also gives the viewer a feeling for who we are and why we do what we do. This video can be used by the Foundation for multiple purposes! So in a way, this January 22nd event, motivated me!
I have been working on this video for two weeks now. Picking the music that the video was timed to was next to impossible for me. I can't tell you how many songs I listened to until I found the one that captured the sentiments and energy I was looking for. I mentioned in a previous blog that I chose the song "lean on me." Well I quickly changed that and moved to "You got a friend in me." However, I felt that song was too trite given the subject matter and therefore my final selection was Phil Collin's, "You'll be in my heart." I hope to launch the video tomorrow and when I do I will post it to the blog.
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