Pre-Conference Opening Reception
Featuring: Venice Arts Venice, CA
Venice Arts is an innovative arts center that brings talented artists together with low income young people to nurture their creativity, imagination, and talent. Venice Arts programs focus on those whose access to the arts, as artists or audience, has been limited.
Venice Arts' mentor-artists guide young people through experiences with the arts, exposing them to the tools, ideas, and environments that help them express their creativity, build positive interethnic relationships, and improve their academic performance and job readiness.
Photographs from Social Arts Initiatives, a special documentary project exploring social justice and community issues, will be on display. Meet the youth who created the pieces and have an opportunity to purchase artwork to support the participation of youth arts programs through Venice Arts.
For more information on Venice Arts, please visit their website at www.venice-arts.org
OPENING/GENERAL SESSION
9:00 am – 9:45 am
| CREW has been stomping into the hearts of thousands of children, teens, and adults all over the country for years! This exhilarating performance, which emphasizes leading a positive and healthy lifestyle by demonstrating hobbies such as anti-drugs, has energized, inspired and impacted audiences all around. Chris Rubio, director and choreographer, travels nationally and internationally with the off-Broadway show STOMP. |
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JR. CREW (youth ages 5-18) perform for schools, organizations and special events. Their shows emphasize drug-free living and positive self-esteem as a means to stay away from negative influences. These kids are dynamic! |
LUNCH/GENERAL SESSION
12:00 pm - 1:30 pm
Jonathan Mooney
Author. Public Speaker. Different.
Jonathan Mooney is a dyslexic writer and activist who did not learn to read until he was 12 years old. He is a graduate of Brown University’s class of 2000 and holds an honors degree in English Literature. Jonathan is founder and President of Project Eye-To-Eye, a mentoring and advocacy non-profit organization for students with learning differences. Project Eye-To-Eye currently has 20 chapters, in 13 states working with over 3,000 students, parents and educators nation wide.
A winner of the prestigious Truman Scholarship for graduate studies in disability studies and social change, Jonathan was also a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship. With the publication of Learning Outside The Lines (now in its 14th printing) when he was 23, Jonathan has established himself as one of the foremost leaders in LD/ADHD, disabilities, and alternative education. His second book, The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal, is a memoir, published by Henry Holt in June, 2007. Lauded as “a heartfelt rebuke to the rigid definitions of normality,” by Kirkus Review, the book is Jonathan’s journey across the United States, in a converted short school bus, as he seeks to celebrate cognitive and physical diversity through profiles of people who have been labeled abnormal their entire lives. His work on behalf of students with disabilities was recognized by the LD Access Foundation in 2003 when he was awarded the Golden Advocacy award. Previous honorees include David Boies, Judith Rodin, former President of The University of Pennsylvania, and The Honorable Thomas H. Kean, former governor of New Jersey.
Jonathan is a highly sought-after speaker and has lectured in 43 states and three countries. He has lectured at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, Brown University, the University of Wisconsin School of Education, New York University Medical School’s Grand Rounds, Teachers College Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, Vassar College, and many other institutions of higher education. Jonathan has also given keynote addresses at most major national education conferences and speaks frequently to students of all ages.
Jonathan has been featured and quoted in The New York Times, USA Today, NPR, ABC News, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and numerous other local and regional papers in the cities, states, and countries where Jonathan has traveled.
For more information on Jonathan Mooney, please visit his website at www.jonathanmooney.com
SNACKS & NETWORKING POOLSIDE RECEPTION
4:45 pm – 6:00 pm
Whether you are relaxing after a long day or getting ready for a night out, take time to connect with your team and meet new colleagues at our poolside networking reception.
VILLAGEFEST- STREET FAIR
6:00 pm – 10:00 pm
Locals and tourists happily mingle at the Palm Springs Villagefest held year round every Thursday evening on Palm Canyon Drive. An open-air street fair with more than 200 booths offering live music, fresh fruit stands, artists, craftsman, unique foods, and street entertainers to charm the crowd is a must for conference-goers. Admission is free and within walking distance from all of the BOOST conference hotels!
The Palm Springs Art Museum offers free public admission every Thursday evening from 4-8pm during downtown Villagefest! The Art Museum currently has 28 galleries, five art storage vaults, two sculpture gardens, four classrooms/resource centers, a 90-seat lecture hall, the 433-seat Annenberg Theater, a Museum Store and a Café in an architecturally significant building designed by architect E. Stewart Williams at the base of Mount San Jacinto. An adjacent Administration building contains offices and a 12,000-volume Library.
www.psmuseum.org
BE THE CHANGE YOU WISH TO SEE
Yvonne and Rich Dutra St. John, Challenge Day and Be the Change Movement Founders
Imagine a school day where enemies find their common ground and make peace: where friends heal past hurts and make amends; where young people ignite their passion for service and leadership; where every student feels safe, loved and celebrated. This is the work of the heart. This is the work of Challenge Day.
Challenge Day is a non-profit organization that provides powerful, often life-changing experiential programs to youth and their communities. All Challenge Day programs are rooted in the understanding that drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, depression, smoking, teasing, bullying and violence are actually symptoms of a greater problem. It provides young people with the opportunity to be totally real and honest, to experience what’s possible, and then to rise up as leaders-all in an atmosphere of fun, love, compassion, acceptance and respect. Challenge Day inspires youth to be the change they want to see-in their lives, in their school, in their community, and in the world.
As founders of the Challenge Day Program and Be the Change Movement, Yvonne and Rich Dutra-St John MA MFT, have a vision to create a world where every child feels safe loved and celebrated. The Challenge Day program has been widely honored and recognized for its contributions, including awards from Juvenile Justice System, D.A.R.E. Officers Association and many school districts and cities nationwide. In April of 1999, after the tragic incident at Columbine High School, Rich and Yvonne were asked to bring the Challenge Day program to Colorado as part of the healing for the greater Denver community. In November 2006, Challenge Day was featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show and in reference to their work Oprah proclaimed… “This is how we change the world.”
Closing Event
JOSE’S SCHOOL OF ROCK
After-School All-Stars, Los Angeles, CA
Jose's School of Rock is a free after-school music program serving at-risk students ages 10-14 within the inner city Los Angeles area. Its goal is to teach the fundamentals of rock music enabling students to form bands, create, play and perform the music they love. Jose's School of Rock is a thriving branch of After-School All-Stars (ASAS); an educational non-profit organization currently operating in 16 schools in the Los Angeles area as well as 14 other cities nationwide and serving over 60,000 middle-school students nationally.
Jose's School of Rock began in 2005 when Jose Mercado was hired to expand the guitar program started in 2002 at Griffith Middle School. Previously, Jose had achieved fame playing guitar and writing for the Epitaph signed band, Union 13, who performed with such famous acts as Dropkick Murphy's, Suicidal Tendencies, NOFX, Pennywise, D.R.I., VooDoo Glow Skulls, Subhumans, and Slayer. Jose, who was born and raised in East LA and attended Griffith Middle School, is working to expand the School of Rock as he continues to give back to the community and school from which his love for music was founded and nurtured.
Join us in our closing with some of the most talented middle school rock stars around! Come rock out to your favorite tunes and be educated, enlightened, and inspired. |
