Dr. Elaine Swafford
On Monday, Jan. 19, Baylor School students and faculty will observe the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday by celebrating the school’s 21st annual “day on” with service work throughout the Chattanooga area and educational workshops on campus.
To kick-off the school’s MLK Day observance, Dr. Elaine Swafford, executive director of the Girls Leadership Academy in Chattanooga, will speak on “Purposeful Impact” to the full student body onFriday, Jan.
16 in the school’s alumni chapel. She will address upper school students (grades 9-12) from 9:45 a.m. – 10:30 a.m.; and middle school students (grades 6-8) from 12:05 p.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Prior to her position at Girls Leadership Academy, Dr. Swafford served as vice-president of student affairs at Chattanooga State Community College and was a member of the president’s cabinet and executive staff. Dr. Swafford has also served as an area superintendent for Hamilton County Schools and was the executive principal at Howard School of Academics and Technology. She has served on many boards including the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce, Goodwill Industries and the YMCA.
Beginning at 9:30 a.m. on Monday, Baylor’s MLK “Day On” will Include:
- Nearly 200 Baylor juniors, seniors, teachers, coaches, and advisors will volunteer at the Chattanooga Zoo, the Community Kitchen, Crabtree Farms, the Humane Society, Memorial Hospital, the North Chickamauga Creek Conservancy, Girls Leadership Academy, the Pet Placement Center, Red Bank Life Care Nursing Home, and Walden Farm.
- An additional group of 21 students will travel to the Whitwell Middle School Holocaust Memorial, where students in Baylor’s German classes and other classmates will translate letters and poems written by German youth.
- Back on Baylor’s campus, one groupa group of students will bake and deliver treats for firefighters at the nearby Red Bank Fire Department while the school’s community service program will host area children from various afternoon tutoring sites for a day of activities on campus that include chess, a trip to the Baylor climbing wall, dance, pottery, woodworking, tie-dye, cooking, piano, yoga, and theatre.
- Also on campus, students in grades 6-10 will participate in a variety of activities that focus on the work of Dr. King, the Civil Rights movement, and tolerance in today’s culture, including viewings and discussions of the movies 42 and Lee Daniels’ The Butler. Sophomores will also have the option to attend a dramatic reading and discussion of The Laramie Project, a documentary-styled play that analyzes the death of Matthew Shepard, an openly gay college student who was brutally murdered because of his sexual identity.
- The day concludes at 2 p.m. with a full student body and faculty celebration in the school’s Alumni Chapel featuring the music of “The Nighthawks,” featuring Baylor faculty members Bernard Fertal, Takisha Haynie, John Lecce, Kenneth Parks, and Pete Robinson.