At the end of her junior year, senior Amanda Rubio prepared for one of the most important interviews of her high school career—an interview with Leadership teachers and administration. The interview was for the position of executive board president.
“I was nervous, but I knew I had to be in the moment and present. By the end, I felt confident [about the interview],” Rubio said.
Rubio found out she got the position in late April. While the moment was a huge step, like all Leadership students, her rise in the ranks did not come without initial struggle.
Rubio joined Leadership class her freshman year. To make it into the class she had to submit an application and send out recommendation letters, which were later reviewed by the Leadership teachers Kari Miller and Sarah Bearss.
“I wanted to join[Leadership] because I knew we did things like homecoming planning events for students, and I thought, especially going into my freshman year, that would be a really fun thing to be involved in. Then I grew to really love it,” Rubio said.
Who can be a leader
All students interested in Leadership start their application between January and February. The course is open to all four grades, with an ideal class consisting of six to seven students per grade. Every student must reapply to the Leadership class every year with no guaranteed entrance.
“We are looking for students who want to have a voice, who have enthusiasm, who maybe have a different perspective, who are comfortable speaking their thoughts and their opinions and sharing,” Miller said. “We have a lot of traditions here. There are a lot of things that we do every year, but one of the things that we’ve tried to focus on is incorporating some new ideas. We want a balance between holding on to our traditions and trying new ideas.”
The leadership subdivisions
Student leadership is divided into three different organizations: executive board, Leadership class and Student Government Association. While each organization has different assigned roles, they all overlap with the Leadership class.
The executive board and student body officers are the heads of student government. The board has a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and director of public relations. They are in charge of planning day-to-day assignments like small spirit days, giveaways, and budget management. They are also in charge of running the Interclub Council, designed to connect all the clubs around campus into a defined community. The executive board also attends a county-wide meeting every other month, meeting with executive boards from other schools.
Leadership class is known for planning big events like homecoming, prom and winter week, but they are also in charge of lots of lesser-known (smaller) activities throughout the year. Leadership students work on back-to-school activities such as freshman orientation and club crawl, homecoming week, winter week, and the Sammys as well as reviewing food drives, toy drives, and assisting during AP testing.
While most Leadership students enter through application, all class presidents are required to be part of the Leadership class, giving them a direct admission to the class. But, as with any applicant admission, all four years are not guaranteed since they must continue to be selected by their peers as class president. Each class has a designated SGA with a president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, director of PR and senators, but only the class president has a guaranteed admission to the class. They are in charge of respective class events like fundraising, spirit week participation and, most importantly, planning for senior week and prom.
For junior class president Mitchell Richmond, his Leadership journey did not begin until his sophomore year. After a denied application his freshman year, Richmond decided to run for class president when the then-president stepped down. By becoming class president his sophomore year, he was able to get a direct admission to Leadership. But getting into the class was not the hardest part.
“The biggest stress I faced probably was last year. I was doing my first committee ever and just being expected to know how to do certain things that I might not have been the best at took a toll on me,” Richmond said. “So just trying to adapt to what the actual class is and knowing whether or not I’m going to be able to do this the right way.”
A class filled with points
Apart from planning events and completing lessons on interviewing and public speaking, Leadership students are graded for a total of 50 points per quarter, which is worth 50% of their grade. The points are referred to activity points, gained by attending different events during students’ free time.
“Sometimes [Leadership] can be a lot in comparison to other classes. We are required to have 50 points per quarter, which is, I think, around 16 hours in addition to the class. But, freshman year, I got the hang of it after a little bit,” sophomore class president Summer Hurst said.
The events can range from passing out T-shirts during their lunch period to attending Parent Teacher Student Association or School Board meetings. When students attend these meetings, they are expected to take notes and summarize what was said in the meeting, which they will present during class. Each point represents 20 minutes.
“We’re asking them to do things outside of class—we want that to be reflected in their grade too,” Miller said.
Lessons in the chaos
Senior class president Valeria Romero joined Leadership her sophomore year. She served as class vice president her freshman year and class president sophomore, junior and now senior year. Throughout her Leadership career, she learned to assign work to teammates, something she struggled with previously.
“The class helped me learn how to work with people, which is something that I did struggle with because I had troubles sort of like delegating things,” Romero said. “Now, obviously, we have so much stuff to do, I can’t try to do everything by myself, so I really think it helps with task management, and working with other people.”
Romero is not the only student who gives Leadership credit for helping them develop as a leader; Rubio has developed her confidence as she rises through the ranks.
“Leadership helped improve my confidence. Freshman year in the class, I would come in and I would almost never talk.” Rubio said. “It’s just been this growth since freshman year. It’s been just a journey of confidence, kind of finding my voice and being able to speak up and, you know, have that leadership quality that people have.”
In the face of criticism
In their most recent county-wide meeting, the executive board brought up an issue they have grappled with for the past few years: school spirit.
Despite gathering ideas from other schools, leadership needs more to get any new event approved. There are strict processes that Leadership needs to follow in order to get certain events approved. They first need to brainstorm a plausible idea, get approval from administration and then send it for approval to the county. Depending on the event, further approval may be needed from additional people like risk management.
“I want people to realize we are trying to work with other people, and [school spirit] is not something that we’re just ignoring. We are trying to address it,” Romero said. “But obviously we have limitations when it comes to admin or even risk management, because that prevents us from planning things that might be more fun.”
Rubio also notes that it takes more than one person to increase school spirit.
“I’ve heard a lot of complaints about the dress up days and how they’re boring, and nobody wants to do them because they’re too easy or too boring,” Rubio said. “But it’s that way because student participation is so low. We have those easy dress up days, so it’s easier for students to participate.”
Despite all the long hours and negative reactions from students, they still find the class and the job worth it.
“Being able to go to homecoming and seeing the students just experience the week and seeing people enjoying the things that we’ve put together, it’s very rewarding,” Hurst said.
Leadership students work throughout the year to give students the opportunity to have fun. While the class can be overwhelming at times, the students work hard to get events done properly and efficiently as possible.
“I wish students knew how much time, effort, and energy these kids give of themselves,” Miller said.
