My dream has been adt since i was 13, and to be a principal dancer is reaching those heights. Now 32, Misty Copeland has forged her own unique path as she danced her way up the ranks of one of the worlds most competitive professions. Im just so honored, so extremely honored to be a principal dancer [laughter] to be an africanamerican and to be in this position. Despite naysayers along the way including one rejection letter saying she had, quote, the wrong body for ballet, copeland has persevered. I had moments of doubting myself and wanting to quit because i didnt know that there would be a future for an africanamerican woman to make it to this level. At the same time, it made me so hungry. After years of hard work, this ballet star who was raised by a single mother on welfare has transvended dance, being named by Time Magazine as one of starring in ads for brands like dr. Pepper and under armour. Now, as she assumes her new position, for copeland its about continuing to change the ballet experience. I want to bring more people to ballet, i want to see more people that look like me on the stage, in the school and in the audience. While inspiring future ballerinas. And all the little girls that can see themselves through me, its giving them a brighter future. Misty copelands story is inspiring others, including dancersal at the center for arts and culture. Indira etwaroo is here with dancers, sequoia harris and faith mondesire. Did i get it right . [laughter] misty received a letter saying she didnt have a dancers body . Fact, in her memoir, life in motion an unlikely ballerina, she talks about how her busts were too large and her legs were just not the right proportion. And so in many ways, you know, we can look at this and say that is this code for not allowing someone whos different than the typical ballet dancer into the ranks . But, you know, as weve seen, shes sort of gone against the odds, hasnt she . She has. And if you all have a very interesting you all have a very interesting connection. You met her. She came and spoke to your march . Back in march. How was that . It was extraordinary. Ive had a chance to meet Misty Copeland several times as a producer and present her to adult audiences. This is the first time i had a chance to connect her with young audiences, and it was so powerful. She literally, during her time oneonone time with each to dancer, signing a book or asking or answering a question. Right. So it was really phenomenal. When you think about the advice that she gave, you know, to the kids, of the ones that you were actually there to witness and on observe, what were the common themes or what was it that she was saying . There was one thing she said that was so resonant, and it was so simple, but it will stay with these young people. Itll stay with me for the rest of my life. You are beautiful. And as we think about the fact, you know, John Henry Clark said that slavery ended and left intact were false images of black people. And so what Misty Copeland does and alvin ailey and all these incredible artists, is they affirm our beauty. Thats what shes done throughout her entire career. Tell us about the Restoration Center and what you do there in bed stuyvesant. The fedford stuyvesant restoration corporation, the First National corporation that is for Community Development in the nation. It was founded back in 67, and it is about insuring the quality of life for people in pedstuy, central brooklyn and even beyond. It has tackled issues like housing and unemployment, but it also has this 40plusyear history with the arts. The Billie Holliday theater, weve presented jacob lawrence, and then we have our Youth Arts Academy where we have these incredible young dancers, aspiring dancers working with world class artists like ron k. Brown and nathan tripe, so its an extraordinary place for art making. You brought in some dancers [laughter] faith, sequoia, when did you know you wanted to be a dancer . Dance classes at a very young age. I started with indian dance and then went to ballet, and by the time i got to restoration, i was about 5, 6 years old, and i was really i felt really free and expressive when i could dance, and thats what ive been doing. Faith, same story with you . Yeah. I started in church, so i did dance for a couple of years. I think when i was maybe 11 or 12, i was taken to see alvin ailey perform, and that was my first time seeing a professional dance company. And since then i always felt like, wow, this is what dance can look like, so that made me feel like i can achieve the same thing. And indira, a lot of people think dance gets the least amount of attention of all of the arts and is deserving of more. Do you agree or disagree with that statement . Where are you with that . I suspect thats whoever you york city is aap go to restorationplaza. Org, and we have a facebook page. All right, well put that up. Faith and sequoia, youre going to be performing for us. Is this a special piece, anything you can tell us about the piece youll be doing . Well, it is a part of a bigger work about the mythology of love. Does it have a name, faith . Yeah. Its called an echo of stain. We cant wait to see that. So nice to meet all of you, and we will definitely put the information up, inn deer ya. Coming up next, as a parent, you always want your kids to build their goals, and Building Confidence is essential to that. The book breaking codependency, and it absolutely addresses all of those issues. Tell me a little bit more about the book and the inspiration behind it. Yes. So breaking codependency was born out of my Journey Towards healing and selfdiscovery and redemption. And as i wrote the book and talked to other women, i realized that there were other people that experience issues with codependency. So the book quickly became a book of hope, healing and resources for individuals navigating traps of codependency. When you say codependency, do you mean another person, or do you mean a codependent perhaps a parent or yeah. So definition, codependency which enabling is a major element of codependency is when a person reinforces negative behavior through a consistent course of rescue conduct. So it could be two people that are pulling each other down. Characteristic which is in line with what were talking about today is that most people who are suffering from codependency have issues with low selfesteem and low selfconfidence. Low selfesteem meaning how we feel about ourselves, and low selfconfidence about how we feel about our abilityings. When you talk about trying to break that cycle, and were talking about Building Confidence in kids, can children be codependent to a parent . And where does this helicopter parenting come into play with that . Yeah. Children can definitely be codependent. You can have a child that is experiencing a very low selfesteem, is not feeling good about themselves. And a lot of it is based upon what they see. Parents, we are the mirrors of our children, you know . They look at and take their cues from us. So if theyre in an environment where theyre constantly being reinforced, then that, unfortunately, transfers to them. And it has a lot to do with them being their selfconfidence. You raised five boys. Yeah. Yeah. We saw, we have pictures of them. Great, great looking bunch. Thank you. What did you know at the beginning that you found out you thought you knew but didnt know as theyve gotten, youve got em all mostly out of the house now. Yeah, mostly out of the house. What did you say, oh, i think i knew this going into it, only to find well, whats been the biggest thing you thought you knew . About raising five boys. Theyre all different. Okay. They all have different personalities and different desires and that you have to push, you know . You have to push. And i would say and im just going to say because i did raise five boys that you probably have to push a little harder. Of course. [laughter] a whole lot harder. Yeah, you probably have to push a little harder with the boys. Trying to i knew early on that building selfconfidence in them was very important, so i tried to just do things that would help to boost their selfesteem and boost their selfconfidence at an early age. Thats what i was about to ask you for parents that are watching and would like advice and perhaps some suggestions or tips on what they can do, what are some of the things you would say to parents . So one of the things, what i just said, is that we are the mirror. They take their cues from us, you know . If youre Walking Around and youre always downing a kid and youre always talking negatively, then thats not a good thing. And a lot of that transfers. The other thing is that we have to allow them to dream and help them to realize that the only failure is in not trying. So thats another thing. We also dont want to set them up for false expectations. We want to praise them when they do well, but we dont want to praise them all the time, because we want them to be able to know or to deal with the with living. We also, i have something that i did with my boys, and i really like it, and id like to share it. When they were growing up and we were at home, every morning we would, i would stand at the top of the steps, and as they were leaving, i would say what will you do . And they said i will study to show myself approved. And i said how will you do it . They said i can do all things through christ who strengthens me. Yeah, you know. [laughter] selfaffirmation is very important. I did it with a postit and a pen as well. At night before they went to sleep, i wanted them to go to sleep with something positive on their mind, so we took our postit, we took our pep, and i always had them write a positive something. I wanted that to be the last thing that they went to bed with and the first thing they woke up so affirming your children is very, very important. You want to do that. You also want to make sure that theyre comfortable in trusting their own instincts. We know everything or, we think we do, were the parents. But we have to allow them to trust their instincts. Well, because that builds selfconfidence. The other thing is we have to help them to understand that there are down days. Everybody doesnt smile all the time. And so we must let them see us when were going through and allow their sensitivity to kick in. Because then that helps to boost their selfconfidence. When do you know that you can scale back a little bit because you can see that the seeds that youve planted are starting to grow . When do you know . Im sure theres not an age or automatically at 16 or 17 right. How does a parent, whats a sign . Yeah, ill tell you. So when they start coming to you instead of saying i cant, they so my, i had one boy, my 18yearold whos going to njit this fall thats huge. He yeah. He was a s. T. E. M. Kid. He loved s. T. E. M. He didnt love basketball, baseball, soccer. I had introduce canned him to all those things introduced him to all those things, and we should make sure we give them a variety of things to try. Thats not what he liked to do. He wanted to work on computers. And so i allowed him to make that choice. My other sons, they were athletes. They enjoyed athletics. I allowed them to make that choice. So you have to give them that room and that space to make decisions for themselves, and that will undoubtedly boost their selfconfidence. Now, i know youre also a minister. Yeah. And so your faith is very important to you. Yes. How much did that play a role in trying to make sure that you were Building Confidence in your own kids . Oh, yeah. Im a mom, a wife, a minister, a motivational speaker doctor. And a doctor, praise the lord. [laughter] so i have been blessed to not only make an impact on my children, but also a lot of children coming through the church. Ive held many youth conferences that go around the country. I have one conference called ready to rise, and thats when we do one of our exercises is the power of the words to transform you. And so faith is very important, and that is another principle that i like to impart to parents affiliation is. Where can we find the book this. You can find the book on amazon. Com, you can also find the book on lesly devereaux. Com if you want an autographed copy. Its lesly yes. All right. Thank you. So nice to meet you. The fourth chapter of philippians is my favorite. Oh, see . All right. God bless you. So nice to meet you. Nice meeting you. All right, coming up, two teenagers raising awareness youre going continuing our discussion on empowering young people, we have two twins making a difference on autism. Well as marcia scheiner. Nice to meet you both. First question, whos the older twin . I am. [laughter] tell us about your mission here, about your campaign. So the real Mission Behind our campaign was to, you know, spread awareness for autism and aspergers and seeing that many young people affected by the disease dont have a job even though theyve graduated from universities. Its really important to us to, you know, spread awareness and make sure that theyre getting equal treatment in society. Were spreading awareness by creating a psa with the help of okay. Money for. Tell us about the inspiration behind it, ria. Whats your connection . One of our really close Family Friends has autism, and we were exposed to it from a really young age, so we just really wanted to help. And how tough is it to deal with it . People still dont quite understand, you know, autism or aspergers, you know . Theres is still a lot of myths, you know, associated and from our understanding, a lot of misinformation, marcia, as well thats being put out about it. But you chime in. When you hear is and see stories like these two are doing, how does it impact what you do . Its terrific. The whole point of this campaign is really to create broad awareness about the fact that today 35 of 18yearolds with an Autism Spectrum Disorder are going on to college and university. So that really tells you about the capabilities of individuals on the autism spectrum. Yet they have a 7585 Unemployment Rate upon graduation. So this is a real crisis in the autism community, and when you have young adults like ria and rohan taking it upon themselves to go out and do a project like and do Something Like creating a Public Service announcement that can really spread this message broadly throughout the country, its wonderful. And, marcia, tell us about astep. So astep is an organization that i founded five years ago with the goal of really creating suitable and sustainable employment for individuals with aspergers syndrome and similar autism spectrum profiles. And it was really driven by this fact that you have this population of individuals now who are achieving high educational levels, have tremendous skill sets, have tremendous skills and talents to offer employers yet still continue to have this astronomically high Unemployment Rate. Why do you think that is . You know, these are individuals where the bulk of their challenges are around social issues and communication. And our process today for getting a job is largely around your social skills and your ability to communicate. Right. Tremendous skills and talents that they can bring to a workplace, its very hard for them to communicate that when they go through the traditional interview process. So what we do at astep is we really focus on the employers, and we are out there talking to employers and working with them to create awareness about aspergers syndrome and similar autism spectrum files, educate them about the talents and skills of this population. Why from a business perspective its important to be hiring these individuals. These are individuals that are incredibly innovative in the way they think, and if you listen to lots of forwardthinking people today, theyll tell you that if you want to be on the cutting edge of innovation, you probably want people on the spectrum in your work force. And then what we do is work with these employers to figure out how to be prepared to successfully employ people on the spectrum and actually help them go do that. So nice to meet all of you. And you two, keep doing what its so neat to see young people trying to make a difference especially about a sensitive and very important subject, all right . My best to you all. Thank you. Okay. From students as promised, sequoia harris and faith mondesire will be taking us out for break here as we talked about Misty Copeland and the impact shes having on our youth. Im going to step out of the way and let you all dance. Im going to say goodbye to you. Click on the Public Affairs tab, and you will find us right there under good day street talk. Follow us on twitter and like us on facebook. Well see you next week for more street talk. Antwan lewis reporting and, as always, thanks for your company. Heres what you do your where you do your thing, im going to leave. All right, take it away. female narrator the following is a paid presentation for the Bye Bye Foundation beautiful you collection from it cosmetics by jamie kern lima. Brought to you by guthy renker. Imagine having skin that looks this beautiful, this flawless, without having to wear foundation. Imagine a product that covers everything but looks and feels like youre wearing nothing. Imagine one product that is clinically shown to make your skin youngerlooking in just ten days and can make you look up to five years younger instantly. This life changing product is Bye Bye Foundation, the first ever full coverage moisturizer from it cosmetics. Its proven skincare and full coverage, plus Broad Spectrum spf 50 sunscreen all in one simple step. So say, byebye, foundation, and, hello, beautiful, flawless looking skin
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.