From the editor: Students take opportunity to display unique talents

If you’re like me — which is to say, old and cranky — you stand at the gas pump or the supermarket meat cooler these days and wonder if, somehow, we’ve been transported back to the Seventies.
You might remember. Meat shortages. Outrage over $1 gasoline. The malaise days.
Then you run across some kids who have written prize-winning poetry, painted prize-winning artwork or have come up with workable ideas for making their community better. And you know it can’t be 1973 again.
The kids seem smarter and more talented now.
That’s the feeling I’ve gotten again and again over the last few weeks.
The feeling came from a couple of St. Mary Parish School Board meetings, the St. Mary Student Art Show and the Rotary Club of Morgan City’s annual New Generation Forum.
At the February School Board meeting, special recognition was given to Victoria Nguyen, a Berwick High senior. She submitted the winning artwork in the Louisiana High School Activities Association Poster Contest.
Her artwork appeared on the cover of the station football championships program.
A month later, a Berwick sophomore, Cherish Lewis, won the same sort of recognition for a different reason.
Her poem, “A Broken Home,” had been published in Expressions, a national poetry journal for young people.
She read from her poem, and, truth be told, it was pretty dark.
The broken home she wrote about was our nation, beset with all sorts of problems — a broken home where hundreds of millions of people live.
What came through was the depth of feeling that too often fades away as we go to work, raise a family, wrestle with the mortgage payment and wonder where that gray came from all of a sudden.
It’s good to be reminded that idealism lives in young hearts.
She showed up again at the New Generation event, which always leaves a person feeling better.
All eight St. Mary high schools sent teams armed with ideas.
Berwick High’s team backed a social media campaign to promote the Atchafalaya as a site for a National Estuarine Research Reserve, which would offer educational opportunities.
Morgan City High students want to put business people with teens to learn what they need to know about the workplace. Central Catholic’s team proposed a Community Day at Lake End Park, and Franklin’s teens hope to start a program that introduces high school freshmen and sophomores to college life.
Patterson High’s students plan to offer tutoring to children at Hattie Watts Elementary. Centerville’s team wants to continue to improve the community’s park.
Nathan Adams of Hanson Memorial was a one-man team, striding back and forth across the Morgan City High gym floor like an actor burning up the stage. He made the case for practical education in high school courses.
West St. Mary students hope to turn some vacant land near the school into a park. Students need a place to relax and interact, something to do.
They supported their argument by talking about recent violence, including a homicide, involving young people.
Then, last week, it was time for the St. Mary Parish Student Art Show.
As parents and students entered, one of the first works they saw was a portrait of a grandfatherly, white-haired man.
You were drawn to it. It was by another Berwick artist, Isabella Thibodeaux, and anyone would be proud to have it hanging in a home.
And it was in the middle school category. With a red ribbon.
If this is second place, I thought, what could possibly have been first?
And on the other side of a room divider, there it was — a painting of a woman sitting in a sea of colorful patterns with an east Asian look about it.
The artist is Lailah Sam, a Patterson eighth-grader.
I’m glad I didn’t have to pick between the two.
Later, the high school prizes for two-dimensional works were presented.
First place went to Cherish Lewis. Victoria Nguyen was third. Nguyen also won Best of Show. Go Panthers.
For all the prizes and ribbons, children here face the same problems kids face everywhere.
Six St. Mary public school students in 10 live in homes classified as low-income. Considered as a group, students from low-income homes have less opportunity for enriching experience such as travel, not to mention troubles like food insecurity, economic insecurity, parental substance abuse and the rest.
But St. Mary has managed to put together a school system, public and private, that can provide a solid education.
The parish consistently ranks in the top third of state public school systems, according to the state’s accountability system.
There’s the nagging feeling that we don’t do as well with what comes after graduation.
Some political candidate or other said recently that what he hopes for his state is that it becomes a place where young people can succeed without being forced to leave.
There’s an idea we can use. Maybe some New Generation kids will come up with something someday.
Bill Decker is managing editor of the Morgan City Review.