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Leadership Camp

posted Oct 17, 2012, 12:21 AM by Golden Knight   [ updated Oct 17, 2012, 12:32 AM ]
  Posted in Campus

  By Brett Feehan
Saint Francis Student Council and ASB members attended a leadership camp this past summer. The camp was conducted by The Leadership Academy, a program that is designed to help groups specialize in certain areas in order to positively affect their own community. The program was three days long, consisting of several lectures and activities to help build a sense of leadership and teamwork. Leadership is the idea of organizing a group of people in order to complete a common task, and teamwork is the work done by all the people involved in the task.
    Saint Francis High School was among six other schools from the Orange County area. Each school had a common goal, to help better their own programs and promote the message of their choice. However, each school had different methods of achieving their goal. Each day consisted of "Classroom Sessions," where students engaged in physical activities as well as social conversations. Each session had a different focal point, ultimately contributing to the final session. The task at hand was to design a service learning project. A service learning project “is a method of instruction in which classroom learning is enriched and applied through service to others." 
    On the second to last day several hours were spent on deciding what project the Saint Francis community should focus on. The possibilities were as followed: assisting humane societies, developing on campus tutoring, providing meals for the homeless on certain dates, volunteering at a veterans hospital, and lastly, partnering with Children's Hospital and their patients. Each idea was feasible, but some were more ambitious and seemed to present a more positive result. The members decided to partner with Children's Hospital mostly because of the personal experience that could be made possible when students met with ill patients.
    The final part of the project was proposing the idea through a video. It had to be a two-minute feature discussing who we are, what we plan to accomplish, how we plan to accomplish it, and what the result would be. We had 3 major events that we planned to accomplish. First, invite the patient to a sports event and declare him honorary team captain. Second, invite the patient to a sports rally and allow him to participate in games. Lastly, invite the patients' family and friends to a movie night held on campus at Saint Francis High School. Our ultimate goal was to help fulfill the dreams of patients at Children's Hospital, and the members of Student Council and ASB felt that they could make all these dreams come true.
     The last part of the project is left to the students. It is if the students can complete all the tasks, meet deadlines, and most importantly, obtain some sort of positive experience by being a part of this event. As the school year continues, student council members actively work on projects. Projects that not only better the lives of students on campus, but also of the members of the community.