McLaughlin

A missed school day is a lost opportunity for students to learn. There is a direct correlation between students who attend school regularly and higher academic achievement levels.

During November and December, McLaughlin School has collaborated with local storytelling groups, See Stories and Wild Voices, enabling select residents to create and produce their own digital narratives.  Residents who were selected for the internship opportunity have been provided with appropriate equipment as well as being taught vocabulary and concepts to create either their own short documentary film or podcast episode.  Throughout this process, residents have worked collaboratively in order to creatively interpret and tell a story of value to them, record and edit their own content, and will ultimately create their own podcast episode or short film product.   

Sunday, December 5th, local songwriter and hip hop artist, Tayy Tarantino, performed his "most important concert" at McLaughlin Youth Center on STX.  Select youth have been working with Tayy over Zoom for multiple weeks during a Shakespeare & Hip Hop class.  The class is a collaboration between MYC, the non-profit See Stories and McLaughlin School.  As part of the course, students learned how to write sonnets, understand the similarities between sonnets and hip hop, and write and record hip hop songs.  

On Sunday, youth were surprised and excited to meet Tayy in person. Tayy spent time between each song in his set to give positive messages to the youth.  He encouraged them to always remember where they came from, but as they move forward to work hard and focus energy into people and passions that will make them a better version of themselves for the future.