What Martin Luther King Jr. Day means to Vail Mountain School students

At Vail Mountain School, Martin Luther King Jr. Day looks a little different than at most schools across the United States.

Instead of a day off from school, Vail Mountain School students and staff engage in a “day on” of service, memorializing the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by volunteering throughout the Eagle County community.

“Coretta Scott King and Congressman John Lewis asked that the MLK federal holiday be a day of action rather than a day of remembrance,” said Maggie Pavlik, Vail Mountain School’s upper school director. “To that end, we honor the day annually with a day of service.”

Vail Mountain School students will spend Monday shoveling snow at the Shrine Mountain huts, baking dog biscuits for the Eagle Valley Humane Society, serving and learning with Eagle River Coalition, helping clean and organize at the Bright Future Foundation and stocking shelves at The Community Market.

For Vail Mountain School, King’s work and legacy is particularly relevant to the school because of their shared values, including “community, knowledge and character,” Pavlik said.

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Ahead of the holiday this year, on Jan. 8, the school hosted the interactive performance, “At the Table with Dr. King,” which engaged students in learning about the American civil rights movement through poetry, music, historical footage and King’s words.

“In an uncertain world where there is so much unrest, we wanted to remind our students that belief in one’s self and one’s values can start small and grow over time,” Pavlik said.

During the performance, students from 4^th through 12^th grade “clapped and swayed to the music (and) held signs of protest similar to those in the Memphis Sanitation Workers’ strike,” Pavlik said. “They snapped, cheered and were in awe of the footage highlighting the sheer number of people who showed up in D.C. for King’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech. They talked about the solidarity of young people who supported King’s movement.”

Following the performance, students debriefed the experience in smaller groups, connecting the work King led during his life to the ways they can engage in and contribute to the world as they experience it.

Senior Winston Pillsbury and Pavlik co-led a discussion with a 9^th grade advisory group. The students “were particularly stuck by King’s courage and humility, talking about when he received a restraining order in Memphis and how King calmly reacted in the public eye,” Pavlik said.

The students discussed how, in the era of social media, they can “show up,” Pavlik said. “In reflecting on the music, the photos and the vocabulary, they discussed what it means to stand for something, how it can be scary or intimidating to make a public statement about a belief and how the world of social media has changed how we communicate.”

As Vail Mountain School students head out to serve the Eagle County community Monday, they will be thinking about King’s legacy and “how it is important to honor those who made great strides in our country and for human rights in a meaningful and purposeful, action filled way,” Pavlik said.