Dist. 300 middle-schoolers hear two outstanding speakers

Like any other product of public schooling, I've seen my share of motivational speakers and attended countless school assemblies.

The best were the ones in high school, at which thirtysomething men with stupid nicknames like "Stan the Man" would speak in vague terms about "making the right choices."

I never understood why they didn't just come out and talk about drugs, alcohol and sex. I suppose they thought they would reach more of us by being more subtle, but they ended up leaving many of us confused and bored.

Being a high school motivational speaker must be a thankless job. I can't recall any of my schoolmates saying how much they enjoyed the latest anti-drug speaker.

And it must be humiliating to be reduced to "making rain" to keep your teenage audience awake.

For those of you who have never had the pleasure, "making rain" means rubbing your hands on your legs, snapping your fingers and stomping your feet to simulate the sound of a thunderstorm.

Sometimes there wasn't even a speaker. One time, my high school screened a video with teenagers, again talking vaguely about the "right choices," bizarrely interspersed with Pepsi product promotion and backed by an inspirational soundtrack.

The DARE anti-drug program in middle school was a prelude to all the fun in store for us in high school. This time, the motivational speaker was a local police officer (who, in my case, had seen the "mean streets" of Novi, an affluent, crime-free suburb of Detroit.)

The one thing that stuck with me from DARE was a story about a man who dropped a lot of acid, which warped his mind to such an extent that he was known to have declared, "I am a citrus fruit."

At the end of DARE, there was a graduation ceremony, complete with student speakers. One of the speakers at my ceremony turned out to be a major drug abuser in high school. Go figure.

With my extensive background in assemblies and motivational speakers, it was refreshing to watch two in the past week in Community Unit District 300 schools that were worthwhile.

The first was Master Sgt. Bill Cavanagh's visit to Hampshire Middle School one week ago. Cavanagh surprised his daughter Kaitlyn, who hadn't seen her father since he was deployed to Iraq in July 2007.

Kaitlyn's eighth-grade classmates gave Cavanagh a standing ovation, cheering and applauding as father and daughter embraced.

After the reunion, Cavanagh answered student's questions about his wartime service. There were more questions than there was time. Afterward, students came up to Cavanagh to thank him for his service and even get his autograph.

Another group of eighth-graders got a history lesson this week from a man who lived it. Aaron Elster, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, told his story to eighth-graders at Westfield Community School in Algonquin.

Again, there were more questions than time, and good ones, too -- like "Do you still hate the Germans?" "Have you made your peace with God?" and "If you hadn't been Jewish, would you have helped hide a Jew?"

After Elster's talk, students bought autographed copies of his book and said his story helped them understand the enormity of the Holocaust.

With all the garbage middle- and high-schoolers have to sit through, it's good to see that rare opportunities to get kids engaged in history and current events are not being missed.