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Haldane Girls Attend a Leadership Conference in Yorktown
A team of six girls from Haldane Elementary and Middle School, along with 15 other teams from schools throughout our area, attended the "Women Helping Girls with Choices" Conference on Friday, October 13, 2006 at the Putnam/Northern Westchester BOCES campus in Yorktown.
The conference was designed to provide leadership experiences for the fifth and sixth graders who attended and to raise the girls' awareness of career and life choices available to them. The Haldane students participated in an essay contest in order to become eligible to attend the conference. Representing Haldane were Claire Carroll, Maya Curto, Dustie Bozik, Lauren Etta, Laura Kearns, and Sunny Quailer.
The conference began with an informal breakfast, followed by the keynote speaker's address. This year's speaker was Roz Abrams, a newscaster for channel 2. Her message to the girls was very strong, informing them that they can push through any fears in life to get to where their hearts take them. She wanted each girl to always remember that they are beautiful,
intelligent, and powerful. During the rest of the morning, small groups of girls from different schools read and discussed one of the books selected for this year's conference. Each group designed and presented a skit or narration that described their book for an audience of other girls.
In the afternoon, our Haldane girls shared lunch with and interviewed Mrs. Amy Dul, a Haldane parent who was invited to attend the conference to share her life choices and career achievements with the girls. Mrs. Dul shared her various careers with the girls emphasizing her present position as the Executive Director of Philipstown Depot Theatre.
The Haldane girls then presented what they had learned about their role model to an audience of girls from other schools, and teams from other schools described women's accomplishments in a variety of careers. Lara DioDati, a sixth grade teacher, accompanied the girls to the conference. With the conference as inspiration, the girls hope to continue to learn about themselves and to have a positive impact on others in their school.
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