Semester 1:
I joined Student Council looking to initiate a positive change in my community, but when I first joined the organization, I saw a lack of support and representation for the student voice. In fact, there was no support in place to elicit student feedback, use student feedback, or even create the change that a Student Council theoretically exists to do. Thus, I dedicated myself fully to trying to create that change, but I was missing one major part when explaining my vision: the why. Certainly, I would explain new initiatives, how we would do it, and then explain why, but as we learned from the very first few days of leadership from Simon Sinek, emphasizing the why and leading with the deeper meaning is critical. Practically, the entire first unit revolved around the idea of the why, from statistics regarding how organizations who lead with the why are significantly more successful to my own observations about the leaders who I followed began with their why. Yet, even in our first Student Council meeting where I tried to propose incorporating student voice in the election process, I didn’t truly unpack the why. I immediately skipped to methods of fearmongering and hypotheticals where the government was a dictatorship, but that kind of chaos didn’t support my argument. If anything, it damaged it. Still, I was set on creating a new branch of student government to address student voice: the Governance committee. With my mentor, Alison Griffin, we created a fully fleshed out plan that would perfectly fit my vision, but this time, we did it differently. We addressed the why: students need to have a voice in student government. No… that’s not the true why: people, in this case students, deserve representation. That's it. How? Students should be given voice in student government. What? Governance committee which uses feedback focus groups, forms, etc. Thanks to Alison and the work from leadership, I finally had my why: representation and empowering voices. The very thing that pushed me to join the student council was my reason, it makes sense on reflection, but I didn’t realize it at the time. So, the moment came to inspire my vision, and unlike some of my previous failures, I was going to begin with the why. On October 17th, I approached the student council. I asked the group what their why was for joining the student council. The answer? To represent the student body. I then asked if they felt like they represented the student body. To be frank, their answers were less than positive. One member indicated they felt they “served” the community, but that there was no representation. I capitalized on this fact, emphasizing how my reason to join student council was the exact same. Thus, I approached with the how: expanding feedback from students, leading to the what: Governance committee. It was met with overwhelming support. Now, each Governance and full meeting, I begin with our why, and as we have developed methods of student feedback, finding our why is more important than ever because with obstacles coming up around our ideas, we must stay strong to our why.
Semester 2:
As the first semester saw the beginning of Governance, my second semester saw through its purpose. Fostering an opportunity for student voice. As the committee began to meet, we developed a survey to hear from students and unpacks their greatest needs. This survey was well-informed, for, through the use of the wisdom of my mentor and resources from admin, we built off the understanding garnered through the original BVSD wide climate survey. With the Governance committee, I worked to inspire a shared vision by strongly setting out our goals: create a report with tangible actions for admin and other members of our community to address to respond to qualitative feedback given by students which was not being properly facilitated nor receiving a legitimate response. As a committee, we agreed the best way to accomplish this goal was to form focus groups including a variety of voices across our campus to ensure a diverse and developed view. This, most certainly, was a direct example of the conceptual idea of challenging the process studied by our class. Not only were we trying something never been done before, we were taking on a responsibility which previously belonged to admin and returned to the students. Although approaching admin with the consideration was at first difficult, they were more than willing to support our opportunity and we started fast. We formed four focus groups, sent invitations, compiled transcriptions, and developed a formal report to be sent to admin. Such a project truly hinges on the final unit of our leadership class: encourage the heart. Garnering feedback and ensuring all voices are heard is crucial to the success of an organization, and I originally stated, our student council had not been doing that, and to be frank, our administration had been not doing as well as they could have. Thus, through this finalized report, not only was our committee able to see its meaning achieved, but have the student voice truly heard; next steps: ensure our recommendations are followed through.