This year, I have been the faculty advisor to the SALT committee at Windham Christian Academy. SALT stands for Student Leader Activity Team. These are three high school students elected by their peers to plan activities beyond our regular academics and sports program. Their most recent assignment was the WCA talent show which was last week.

The teens on SALT thought it would be fun to have 'judges' like on the various TV competition shows, so we had a high school teacher play the smooth, cool judge, the fourth grade teacher play the ditsy starlet judge, and the principal play the arrogant British judge that seems to be on all of these types of shows. They were perfectly cast, and their costumes were spot on.

I was honored to be the emcee. The SALT kids all had roles, too: Elijah ran the sound booth, Katie was the stage manager and Em was actually part of the show. She played guitar and sang Taylor Swift's "Best Day". This part of the show brought many in the audience to tears; it truly is a beautiful song, even if Taylor Swift is the one who composed it!

The acts were heavy on piano players, but there was a good variety, including karate, poetry reading, singing, dance, tumbling, and, yes, I juggled one routine. We downplayed the competition part, but SALT did decide to give out four awards:

Most Unique: a fourth grader named Nick who played piano, kazoo and sand "I Just Can't Wait to be King"

Most entertaining: two sixth graders name Grace and Lillia who did tumbling. So good.

Most inspiring: Em, a sophomore, for her beautiful song for her family.

Future Star; third grader named Maria who was absolutely amazing on piano.