The sunrise was beautiful as the large bus carrying me and 32 others made its way to the Youth Empowerment Summit (YES) at Mission High School in San Francisco on Saturday the 15th.
I was much too tired to enjoy it however (the bus was scheduled to leave at 6:30 a.m. and so naturally I woke up at about 6:15), and I cheered with significantly less enthusiasm than the other high school students as we welcomed new schools onto the bus.
All together, we had kids from Aptos High, New School, Watsonville High, Pajaro Valley High and North County. There was also another bus that was carrying students from Harbor High, San Lorenzo Valley High, Scotts Valley High, Santa Cruz High, AFE, Pacific Collegiate School, and Soquel High.
These two buses were provided by a private donor and organized by the two largest districts in our county. Even I, as dead-tired as I was, could feel the infectiousness of the excitement that radiated out from the back of the bus (and may or may not have grumpily tried to swat it away).
The YES conference is a large annual conference of Gay-Straight Alliance Network from northern California, organized by GSAs and attended by students, teens, and adults from all over. When we pulled up in front of the beautiful Mission High I was feeling much better, and walked off our bus with as much enthusiasm as the others.
Keep reading:
Links:
[1] http://santacruz.patch.com/blog_posts/high-school-underground-discovering-perfection