Leadership through the eyes of students
Stephanie Chou
News Editor
ultimate
Leadership
Leaders lead to new understandings
Just after the freshmen board elections, Student Association board and all the class boards were told there was going to be a leadership workshop.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” said Judd Korman, S.A. board vice president. “I kind of just assumed that [someone] would be lecturing us or show us a PowerPoint or something about being a leader.”
In actuality, the students took part in a leadership training session lead by motivational speaker Justin Boudreau.
Dr. Michael Tarjan, assistant principal of student activities, initiated the trainings.
“This is the first year we’ve done something like this,” Tarjan said. “I just felt that we put so much into this group of kids both as individual classes and as a school. I felt that they needed to get off on the right foot to start the school year and maybe to learn a little bit about each other.”
“[Boudreau] made us go around and give people we don’t know high fives and sit next to people we don’t know just to get to know some people,” freshmen board representative Michael Korman said. “It was fun to talk and just be silly, I guess.”
According to junior class president Brian Zohn, the activities brought student government together.
“We did a lot of things that let us really be ourselves,” Zohn said. “The freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors were there. We all got to see each other and work as a group”
According to Tarjan, the most interesting activity was a maze that took over an hour to complete.
“The kids weren’t able to speak to each other and they were able to use certain signs and they had to get through a maze,” Tarjan said. “It was very difficult for them and you could see them getting frustrated. But when they figured it out and they all figured it out together it was really, really cool to see that.”
Boudreau also said the best part was the energy students put into the maze.
“My favorite part of these sessions is that the students take away real experiences instead of just being told stuff,” Boudreau said.
In one activity, Boudreau stood on a chair and said “I believe our school has great spirit.” Completely silent the 37 students moved to different sides of the room, “I agree.” “I disagree.” or “I’m neutral.”
According to Judd, one lesson students took away from this activity was to take different people’s beliefs into account.
“Because we are student government, we have to listen to the entire school and represent the school and our class,” Judd said.
According to junior class secretary Sarah Sin, a lot of lessons were learned that day.
“I think the best part of the activities was after we did each activity we kind of gathered around in a clump and talked about what we learned from that [activity],” Sin said. “It was a really nice time of connecting with the leaders in the school and learning from each other.”
Zohn said he learned being put in uncomfortable positions may not always be the worst thing to happen.
“[Being in an uncomfortable position] may be the one thing that gets you the most cans in the canned food drive that anyone’s ever seen or to have the sophomore class win float building,” Zohn said. “We kind of experienced those awkward uncomfortable emotions and saw that it really shows and proves a great lesson.”
According to Judd, Boudreau told the students he was going to pick one person to stand up and speak about leadership.
“Everyone was really scared and nobody wanted to make eye contact with [Boudreau]. He walked around the side [of the group], looking at each person individually,” Judd said. “And then he didn’t end up picking a person. He was never actually going to.”
Boudreau said he wanted to push the kids to learn about themselves.
“I think one of the big messages the kids got out of this was it’s different from when you ask for help from people compared to when you go to somebody and say, ‘I need your help, will you come with me and help us with this project?’” Tarjan said.
One of the goals of the training was to find new ways to get more students involved in activities like float building, said Beth Bassler, Junior class board sponsor.
“In order to get everyone involved [with school activities] we need to be ambitious and opinionated to get people to come along and not be afraid to do certain things or to be put in an uncomfortable position,” Zohn said.
According to Tarjan, he wants to refer to the training as the student government meets throughout the year.
“We’ve kind of revamped student government and that’s one of the reasons we did this,” Tarjan said. “We’re meeting twice a month as an entire student government group with all the class boards. …We haven’t been really consistent with doing that in the past.”
According to Zohn the training is going to help student government be more creative and effective in the future.
“In the future, I’m sure we’ll think of other things to incorporate a lot of students in our grade to help us with school related activities,” Sin said.
According to Tarjan, the leadership training was well worth the money.
“I got a phone call the next day from a parent who wanted to thank me for doing this,” Tarjan said. “Her daughter, it was the first time she came home all year smiling and just happy to have gone to school because of the activities they went through.”