Forging Future Leaders Primary Objective for Inaugural Student Council Session
By: Kendall Haney,
Staff Writer
An enthusiastic crowd of students, parents, teachers, and administrators filed into a familiar feeling virtual classroom on September 2, 2014 to join the Student Council Advisors, Mr. Jeremy Hassler, Ms. Colleen Oates-Robesch, and Middle School Liaison, Ms. Kelly Watson, in kicking off the first ever K12 International Academy Student Council Meeting. For more information on the Student Council, Advisors encourage students to follow them on their new twitter account @k12_INTL-StuCouncil.
Ms. Miriam Rube, Head of School, greeted students with opening remarks as Ms. Oates-Robesch encouraged everyone to write their names over a map indicating where they lived and attended school. Names largely populated the United States, but a few names could be seen over countries in the Middle East and Asia.
Not long after, Ms. Oates-Robesch handed the meeting over to Mr. Hassler to encourage kids to think about what leadership meant to them. As any good teacher might, he ended his remarks by assigning homework. His challenge to students was for all of them to come up with the answer to this question: What makes someone a great leader?
It wasn’t long into the meeting when it became clear that the inaugural group of Student Council participants would be less involved in the creation of policy or new programs for their fellow students to participate in, and far more involved in clinics teaching meeting attendees how to be the leaders they see themselves being upon graduation.
The need for a constitution was front and center for several minutes of the meeting. Students chimed in their ideas in the chat box, while the Advisors took turns explaining what effort had already been put into drafting a document, and how student input would be important in any future amendments to the text. While ratifying a constitution was named an important goal by all of the Student Council Advisors, it was also made clear that the teachers had already come up with one for the students to approve as opposed to create from scratch.
After a discussion of the 2014-2015 calendar, the Advisors defined what the Student Council would be all about. “This is a student based civic organization that helps promote school spirit and leadership among other things,” said Mr. Hassler in his remarks. A PowerPoint slide gave more information about what the club would be all about as he spoke. Specifically, it enumerated goals for this year’s Student Council such as developing student‘s positive attitudes and promoting good citizenship. It would also promote harmonious relations throughout the school, improve student/faculty relationships, morale of the student body, and its general welfare, and provide a forum for student expression.
Mr. Hassler outlined benefits for joining the Student Council, and encouraged all to participate whether they intended to become an officer or not next year. Noteworthy was the fact that seniors who participate in Student Council this year will have the unique opportunity to put on their college applications that they helped to ‘build’ the first Student Council ever at their high school. Benefits to other students included the opportunity to improve reading and writing skills, gain public speaking skills, learn how to communicate and make a positive impact on school and community environments, and make new friends.
Questions Advisors wanted students to consider before the October meeting included being able to define what a Student Council could really do in a virtual environment, and what kind of events the Student Council should host into the future.
To conclude the meeting, Ms. Oates-Robesch gave all students an opportunity to write their ideas on the white board. A bevy of thoughts hit the screen in seconds, and most of them centered around the need for more communication opportunities and relationship building among the students who attended the school. Most repeated comments included words like, “create a Facebook page,” and “Allow us a skype group.” Another said they should “form polls and get everybody’s opinion.”
All in all, energy entered the room high, and remained consistent until the end of the meeting that ran over time. It will be interesting to see what kind of repeat participation the Student Council sees in their second meeting to be announced soon and held in October. Until then, students are encouraged to check their kmail and class connect schedule for a time, date, and Elluminate link to their next meeting.