Youth Leadership Oklahoma: The Blog: YLOK Class XIII Day 6: A Successful Journey

Happy Father's Day! It's been a relaxing weekend as I've wound down from a wild week at YLOK. I'm just now going back and re-reading the things we did and looking at everyone's photos on Facebook. It's hard to believe that one week ago everyone had only been acquainted for a couple of hours. Now, I feel like all of us have pealed back several layers and gotten to know each other on much deeper levels. YLOK Class XIII was a highly rewarding class to work with. Their genuine, kind hearts were readily apparent from the start, and they only improved as the week went by.

Here is a recap of our final few hours together on Friday, which was spent at the State Capitol and the Governor's Mansion Pavilion. That morning, we were able to wake up later than we had all week, 7:30. We did our usual, loading our bags and our best-dressed selves onto the bus one last time from the Bricktown Hampton Inn. Johnny had a bit of a hard time figuring out where to drop us off at the Capitol, but we eventually figured it out. I felt his pain, because it's a little confusing if I do say so myself. We went upstairs to the House of Representatives floor and met House District 65 Representative Joe Dorman. Rep. Dorman has been heavily involved with the creation of the Page program as well as other government education programs within the state of Oklahoma. He answered excellent, thought provoking questions from the students for a solid 45 minutes, if not more (I was flying through my last blog post at that point, so time was also flying). When he was finished, he was extremely complementary of Class XIII to me and LeeAnne for how well-informed and intelligent they all seem to be (DUH!!!). I can attest to that, because I witnessed it for a week. Rep. Dorman has been doing question/answer sessions and hosting a mock legislative session for YLOK classes for years, and we are incredibly grateful to him for spending so much time with us once again this year.

Once the Q & A session was over, we moved into our mock legislative session. Laine Weatherford was our bill's "author" and Jennifer Isaacs was Madame Speaker. Our "bill" was concerning whether or not it was constitutional for schools to notify parents if their student was given any type of suspension, whether in-school or out-of-school. It sparked some excellent debate.

Whoops, cut off half of LeeAnne and Katie.

I spy some budding politicians in the mix.

Jorja Rose arguing against the bill.

Madame Speaker, sorry about the blurriness!

Mishana Ellison questioning the bill.

Our beautiful Capitol dome.

After the mock legislative session, we went to the Governor's Mansion Pavilion for graduation. Lunch was catered by ____ . Our keynote speaker was two time former Oklahoma Governor George Nigh. If Oklahoma could have an official designated cheerleader, it would be this wonderful man. Governor Nigh gave an inspirational speech about leadership. His main points to us were these: 1) You can lead from here (Oklahoma) 2. You can do it now ("you don't have to be an old 'coot' like me") 3. Lead with an exclamation point. Afterwards, he took a few questions, whereupon he was asked to describe how he got "Oklahoma" to be our state song. If you've never heard the story, it is hilarious, and definitely something out of a movie. Here are a couple of pictures to illustrate the charisma that this man still bears at 83 years young.

I even decided to have some fun with these pics and made them an animated GIF. Yup, George Nigh still has some moves.

Finally, after each student was called one-by-one to receive their graduation token, an Oklahoma granite brick, five different skits commemorating the week that had previously been prepared by the students were performed. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing at some of the things they did.

This week was nothing short of perfect. I'm so thankful for my new friends and mentees, who could very possibly end up being my colleagues someday as we push to make Oklahoma the best place in the country to live and flourish. I can't wait to watch them continue to grow from here. It's been a joy to get to know them and see the lightbulbs turn on for each of them throughout the week. I've ended up learning more from them than I ever though possible. Thank you once again, parents, for having such amazing kids and for letting us at YLOK take them on this journey.