By Dan May
Rotary Club of Orange
Dan May
Commencement speakers at college campuses have been having a tough time this year, with those forecasting a rosy AI-powered future often receiving boos. I sympathize with young adults given the gloomy nature of much global news and their own sense of diminished career or home ownership prospects.
Some days I avoid doom scrolling and instead call to mind advice provided by that fictional Civil War heroine, Scarlett O’Hara. She possessed a valued trait called resilience, and in the middle of the epic 1939 film Gone with the Wind declares: “I can’t think about that right now. If I do, I’ll go crazy. I’ll think about that tomorrow.”
Fostering resilience in children and young adults – the process of building mental and emotional strength as well as skills to adapt to adversity and significant stress – is something parents, other adult family members, teachers, coaches, etc., all try to promote to varying degrees. It’s as challenging as teaching reading, writing and arithmetic, but there’s no SAT at the end to measure aptitude to cope with life’s ups and downs.
Community organizations, like Rotary, also try to develop resilience in middle and high school students. For example, the Rotary Club of Orange sponsors and moderates an after-school club at St. Martin de Porres Academy in New Haven. That tuition-free, private middle school serves students from the New Haven area who live with a family below 200 percent of the federal poverty line.
Rotary established a student-led club there, formally known as an Interact club, that enhances school features and the surrounding neighborhood, and partners with local service groups. During the winter holidays, the students also organized a major fundraiser to provide toys for children’s units at Yale New Haven Hospital’s downtown campus. It is inspiring to see 10- to 13-year-olds work together, and garner guidance from academy alumni attending nearby high schools and colleges.
Orange Rotary also sponsors an Interact club at Amity Regional High School, promoting a range of activities there that foster the “7 Cs of resilience” – competence, confidence, connection, character, contribution, coping and control. This Interact club named itself Connecticut Speech and Action, and was formed jointly with students from Amity, Hamden Hall and Hopkins schools.
CTS&A combines public speaking contests with community service projects and virtually engages with students from across the Northeast. Most recently, they organized and hosted a Leaders of Tomorrow Conference at the New Haven Public Library for Interact club members from across Connecticut. It featured remarkable workshops on networking and pitching that would benefit any organization. The adults observing wanted to rename it Leaders of Tomorrow and Today.
Rotary also recruits students from area high schools to compete in its own public speaking competition and leadership academies. For the second year in a row an Amity student won the speech contest for the Rotary district across southern Connecticut with a moving discourse on the perils of gossip. And a team from Amity won second place at the Rotary district’s own spring leadership academy in designing a service project to engage with children who are bedridden in hospitals.
Club members recently reviewed applications for a Rotary scholarship from graduating high school seniors who reside in Orange. It is encouraging to see firsthand the depth of talent and engagement across a large field of applicants, and hard to select a necessarily limited set of recipients. Applications arrived from six area high schools, and the winners this year will graduate soon from Amity, Hopkins School, Sacred Heart Academy and the Sound School.
As a retired college professor, working with young adults has almost always been a joy. It remains enjoyable to continue that a bit with Rotary and makes the future appear brighter when learning the breadth of talent and character of some of those who will be responsible for tomorrow.
I have never actually been able to sit through the entire four-hour runtime of Gone with the Wind. However, I have caught the ending several times when it used to air on cable TV. Clark Gable got a lot of notoriety with his sweeping exit line from the movie, but I prefer Scarlett’s ending to Rhett’s: “After all. Tomorrow is another day.” If the high school grads I’ve encountered optimistically continue with their convictions, I believe tomorrow will also be a better day.
Dan May is the president of the Rotary Club of Orange.