Recently, I was talking with educators about how they prepare for the start of the school year. Everyone buzzed about the new academic year. I heard about every educational issue under the sun. Topics included new teacher evaluation rules, principal and teacher reassignments, student discipline, testing and more. I wondered aloud where student engagement and leadership fits into the picture. How strategies

As a civic educator and youth community organizer, my job typically involves rallying a group of students around a common issue or problem and helping them develop a plan to address this problem and hopefully discover a solution. While it’s a lot of fun and excitement involved, it’s certainly not an easy task. So when I first received the invitation from Special Olympics Maryland to facilitate