Bloomfield High School Brings in Top Motivational Speaker

"Pursue your strengths in your talents, think about your choices and capitalize on your youthful energy."

Date: January 18, 2002
Edition 7 Hartford North Final
Section: Metro Hartford
Source: Joeseph Rocha: Courant Correspond
The Hartford Courant - Copyright © 2002, The Hartford Courant Company
Page B1

BLOOMFILED - sophomore Kyridna Richardson stopped James Amps III as he glided through Bloomfield High School's hallway after his address Friday.

Richardson asked Amps for his autograph and business card and where he could get his motivational tapes. Amps complied and moved on to a smaller session with about 20 at-risk teenagers.

"He made me think I may not have time to do everything I want to in life," Richardson said. "I know I waste time a lot. I know I'm going to college. Maybe I'll be able to manage my time more wisely."

Amps was the first of what school administrators hope will be a periodic offering of motivational speakers, said Benjamin Foster Jr., Bloomfield High School principal.

Students are sometimes cynical about teachers and life in general, Foster said, and bringing in a speaker offers a different perspective and another way to reach teenagers. "All American youth have problems. All American schools have problems," Foster said. "It doesn't matter whether you are a city or a suburban school. Just look at test scores throughout the country."

But at Bloomfield High, the problems are acute. The school had a dropout rate of 16.6 percent for 1999, a figure 12-percentage points higher than state averages. In addition, town high school students' performance lagged on Scholastic Assessment and Connecticut Academic Performance tests. Foster said that Amps was recommended by at least eight principals of urban high schools across the country who were consulted when the Community Awareness Task Force approved funding for a speaker.

Amps is involved with a nonprofit group that seeks to promote social and professional skills among youths. Called the Young Speakers Association, the group seeks to prepare youths for professional and entrepreneurial fields by providing advice, scholarships and grants. In a discussion, or "rap," Friday with a group of teenagers that ended Amps' day, the Florida-based speaker talked about the need for personal accountability in student's lives. Amps surveyed the teenagers for what they considered the toughest obstacle facing them at Bloomfield High School. What he heard seniors Ayanna Alexander and Meisha Simpson say and others nod in agreement with was "lack of motivation," Amps told the young people that they must pursue their strengths in their talents, think about their choices and capitalize on their youthful energy. He said it was time for them to start being leaders instead of following others down a path of destruction and victimization. Amps told them that influences of peers and places where students live are the most basic of hurdles. But overcoming obstacles the rest of their lives