KCSpeaks

When I am not doing workforce development or family stuff, I am busy in my community. My long time community activity has been my voluntary work with my community’s arts council. This not only gives me the opportunity to give back to the community, but to organize and contribute to the cultural arts in my area. For the second year, we just hosted our Artists with Disabilities Art Show. This art show featured artists from all over my state that had a disability.   People with any kind of disabilities are allowed to participate and this year we had a representation of a broad spectrum of disabilities.   We had people with visual disabilities, intellectual disabilities, people with physical disabilities, and people with mental illness. This was a juried art show. In the end, a team of judges, including myself decided on a first, second, and third place winner. There was a monetary award for each prize and each piece of art was judged on artistic merit and not on the artist’...

“ All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.” ~ William Shakespeare When you are the parent of a teenager, you are constantly worried about your children. Not the same kind of worry you have with a young child, but the kind of worry you have as you watch a child become an adult.   As a workforce development professional and parent, you also worry that your child is learning the right skills for the world of work. I often wonder how we learn to work. Watching my son navigate the world and about to enter the world of work, I wonder if he has learned the right skills up until now. Sure when we get a job, an employer will teach us all the technical stuff necessary to do the job, but really it is all the experiences we have had in life, growing up that teach us how to work. This summer, my teenager participated in a musical theater program. ...