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Many thanks to Metro Louisville Council Member Barbara Sexton Smith, who stopped by the Collaborative Learning After School Program (CLASP at Meyzeek Middle School to spend some time with the students. Smith observed students play a word game and spent time chatting about her life.

“My mother grew up as a coal miner’s daughter and was orphaned at the age of six which caused her to move to an orphanage. I was the first in my family to graduate from college with a four-year degree.”

She spoke of her work in the community and of the need for people to help one another, and asked the students to share their own examples. Ideas included planting flowers, picking up trash (which the students participated in last week), even holding the door for another.  Students also considered how best to be kind to one another.

Smith spoke of everyone – herself, students, and others as one big community, each person doing their part to make it safe, keep it clean, and to help and support your neighbors.

She told students about how to step up to be a candidate for elected office and of the election process, and praised the students for the difference they are making, along with their F&CP leaders, in the lives of young people, and thanked them for the hard work they do.

One student asked for her autograph, and she provided it, along with a lovely note.