MLK Day Presentation

Today, I was called to present to Mt. Zion Baptist Youth Group, in St. Petersburg, Florida. After these chosen words below, I spoke about  public speaking, and why it was so important to their future. If you read my last blog, or blogs I hope you get my passion.

YOUR INVITED: If you live in or around the Tampa Bay area and would love to see this current class of 5th grade speakers, and find out why your child should join our summer speech program, please contact me.

• Date: 2/14
• Just RSVP me by: 2/8.  york.ysta@gmail.com
• The speech/graduation  contest
• Start time: 5:30 pm
• 24 - 5th graders will preform speeches and Table Topics  questions
• Location: Pasadena Fundamental Elementary School, 
• Address:95, 72nd St N. St. Petersburg 33710

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A few years back in my third childhood, I read:  Dr. Michio Kaku's interesting book:

Hyperspace and a Theory of Everything

"When I was a child, I used to visit the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco.

I would spend hours fascinated by the carp, who lived in a very shallow pond just inches beneath the lily pads, just beneath my fingers, totally oblivious to the universe above them.

    I would ask myself a question only a child could ask: what would it be like

      to be a carp?

What a strange world it would be! I imagined that the pond would be an entire universe, one that is two-dimensional in space.

The carp would only be able to swim forwards and backwards, and left and right.

But I imagined that the concept of “up”, beyond the lily pads, would be totally alien to them, or would it?

I thought what a wondrous story I would tell the others!

The carp would babble on about unbelievable new laws of physics: beings who could move without fins.

Beings who could breathe without gills. Beings who could emit sounds without bubbles.

Then, one day it rained, and I saw the rain drops forming gentle ripples on the surface of the pond.

Then I wondered?

Would the carp see thru the ripples?  Would he then dream as I did?

What was that world out there about?

Do you have a dream?

Then one day a man, a great man with a dream stood on the steps of history, he said:

“ In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check.

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.

This note was a promise that all men -- yes, black men as well as white men -- would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned.

Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked "insufficient funds."

Spoken by Martin Luther King, August 28th 1963

Do You Have A Dream

In 2003,  as a  3 month Toastmaster I was invited to speak at The Great American Teach-in at Alonso High School in Tampa.

It was that 16 year old boy in the front row ( yes the class clown ) who got my attention.

I had a flashback,  you see I was that boy long ago.

That was the day I knew why I had become a Toastmaster?

You see they threw me out of school at 16, for the third time.  

Then I had a Dream!

My dream was take my new found speaking skills to the Youth of America, my message STAY IN SCHOOL!

Do You Have A Dream?

For more about creating a youth program or our summer youth program contact: york.ysta@gmail.com