Student Council Takes Another Step
By: Kendall Haney,
iGlobe Student Council Correspondent
On October 7th, 2014 at 2 pm ET, the second Student Council (SC) meeting of the year took place, run by Mr. Hassler and Mrs. Oates-Robesch. Approximately seventeen high school students took part in the meeting as Mr. Hassler explained their evening’s mission of moving one step closer to organizing the constitution and creating a real student council opportunity for full-time high school students.
The agenda was clear: First they would do a highlights reel. From there, the team huddle would have an icebreaker, a leadership skills building activity, the vision for Student Council, and then delve into a ‘constitutional convention.’ Afterwards, they would present leadership opportunities and then wrap up the class connect.
After the agenda was explained, Mrs. Oates-Robesch took the mic and told everyone about the SC ‘Happenings.’ The Happenings consisted of monthly meetings, ongoing leadership opportunities, the student council constitution convention which started at the Class Connect (CC), exciting workshops and finally elections that would begin in spring.
They explained the FAQ for joining the Student Council. Specifically, they spent a lot of time going over who could join, when they would meet, and the things required to join in on activities.
Only full-time high school students are allowed to join the Student Council, and participate in the meetings. They emphasized that being an officer is not required to be a member of the student council, and in fact they would not be in a position to hold a formal election until the spring. Finally, they talked about when they would meet, which would be at monthly meetings.
After this, an icebreaker was introduced. Wafaa, a student at the K12 International Academy high school, had created slides entirely by herself. Mrs. Oates-Robesch commented that she thought it was ‘bold’ for a student to be the first one to do this, and was pleased to see a student make these sorts of things.
Wafaa explained her slides. One slide was an icebreaker asking students to please write their first and last name initials with traits that they possessed. The second slide had three questions, and asked students to write about who they were, how good of a leader they were, and traits they had.
All of the students were moved to break out rooms and completed the icebreakers. The teachers had some technical difficulties, but it was nothing that wasn’t resolved quickly.
Next, they moved onto their constitution convention. Mr. Hassler talked about how many students had good answers for what kind of leaders they were, but when asked how they were going to try to change the school itself, Mr. Hassler commented that there were “a lot of crickets.”
He said that one of the reasons there was a student council was because they wanted to change the school for the better.
After this, they talked about their Constitution draft. The draft constitution explained the functions, responsibility, and membership of the council. In full detail, the draft described how the Student Council body worked.
All in all, it was a highly productive and extremely well-organized meeting that is clearly set up to give high school students an opportunity to see how government is formed and employed.
More to come.