Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Mr. Becker Goes to Washington

So last week I was one of the chaperones for a trip to Washington D.C. Twenty of our juniors were invited by the Governor of N.C., Mike Easley, to attend the National Summit on the Silent Epidemic (which refers to the astronomical dropout rate in the U.S.- about 30%). We were in a pretty small conference with some big hitters: Tim Russert, Frank Sesno, David Broder, some Senator from New Mexico, the governors of Rhode Island, North Carolina, and New Hampshire, Secretary of Education Stallings and First Lady Laura Bush. We met most of the above, with the exception of the First Lady, and the kids got a guided tour of the Capitol and attended the world premiere of a new MTV/Gates Foundation documentary, "The Dropout Chronicles". The premiere was a swanky cocktail party (sodas only for the kids and chaperones!) and was hosted by Sway, some MTV celebrity that the kids were thrilled to meet. Anywho, the whole thing was pretty cool and the kids enjoyed themselves and were, I must say, incredibly well-behaved. In the above picture, I am the partially obscured white guy to the right.

5 comments:

Mike said...

Wow, cool! Great experience for the kids. Anything surprising about any of the celebs?

Dave said...

Laura Bush looks much older in person. Probably that nasty pack a day habit she (allegedly) has. Ummm... Frank Sesno is absolutely awesome and loved our kids. Mike Easley is a good politician and seemed to like our young ladies (!), Russert was OK, but kept quoting Yogi Berra. David Broder looks as old as Methuslah, but was pretty cool. Luara B received polite, but reserved applause. Secretary Stallings got her ASS handed to her by one of our teachers during the Q and A, which was awesome.

Mike said...

Oh, nice! I like Broder a lot. He's got to be pretty old.

Jay said...

Sounds like a great trip! Did you see any openly intoxicated politicians while you were there?

Joe said...

You look great, Dave. I can see you're looking fit these days. At least Easley was looking at your young ladies and not the young men. It's good to see a politician buck the trends.

I'd be interested to know how the teacher handed Stallings her ass.