Following two years of online hosting, the SISC Student Council held its first Outdoor Workshop on Leadership (OWL) since the COVID-19 pandemic last March 27, 2023, for Luxembourg Campus student leaders to learn and apply essential skills in team handling.
With the theme “#LezGo2gether: Moving Forward as a School of Belongingness,” the afternoon seminar provided Class Council and Interest Club officers lessons on improving leadership character, project management skills, and task delegation while finding inclusion within the hybrid learning community.
Student Council officials and Ambassadors organized face-to-face lectures, speaker talks, and team-building activities inside the Luxembourg Hall that dealt with the aforementioned topics for the Grades 6-12 audience. VOLT participants tuned in to a live broadcast of the event via Zoom in attendance at the workshop.
“I was more than excited to hear the return of the outdoor workshop . . . [because it] allowed me to really meet with other leaders from other sections and batches and learn from each other,” said Peer Mentoring Club President and 10-Commitment Vice President Seorin Park, who attended the seminar to improve leading skills.
Previously organized as the Online Workshop on Leadership during the full-VOLT academic years, these webinars focused on skills applicable to the online set and had themes on adaptability to change and growth. In comparison, the current OWL aimed to review Monarch leaders about people, task, and self-management to develop camaraderie between Class Councils and for them to apply to their respective student-led organizations. OWL is a leadership workshop intended to train, review, and prepare student officers for their roles in Class Councils and Interest Clubs. According to the Student Council, the annual event — which has been ongoing for 21 years — is specialized for young leaders to develop essential skills and character to excel in guiding school and real-life communities.
‘Be the position’
In her opening remarks, Grades 6-9 Deputy Principal Ms. Nessie Lumbres stressed the need for leaders to connect together within the school community. Relating to her past experiences in leadership, she iterated the cyclic mantra to Learn, Embrace, Act, and Deliver as an officer which formed the acronym LEAD. “If your actions make other people learn more, [and make you] embrace reality, act selflessly, and deliver with integrity, that means . . . you have the qualities to lead,” the deputy principal underscored. She also highlighted the key virtues that involved open-mindedness in dealing with various team members.
Proceeding with these remarks was a Kahoot! icebreaker activity on leaders, from the political to the pop culture stage. Instead of logging in via devices, onsite participants answered by approaching four chairs labeled with the choices found in the game, and many rushed to either one at the moment of each question.
SISC alumna and former Student Council president Sylvia “Zia” Huh took the podium and spoke to the student leaders as the seminar’s guest speaker. Her speech reflected the theme of the workshop as she spoke about feeling belonging in a community, and she spoke about the “Three BEs” that every leader must have: be together, be responsible, and be yourself. “Everyone, be yourself, but always be responsible with your jobs and tasks [that are] given to you, and through that, you guys can always be together,” the former president said. Despite remarking that her advice sounds cliché, Zia reminded Monarchs that they are purposefully so. She emphasized to the young audience, “You guys don’t have to belong to the position . . . you have to be the position and not let the position define you.” “[Zia] inspired me in a way as she told us her past experiences with being a leader and I realized that even if you grow up, you'll take ‘bigger responsibilities’ that'll help you learn more values,” English Club SHS Level Representative and Peer Mentoring Club Vice President Ryza Boco remarked regarding the former president’s keynote speech.
A team-building activity ensued, titled as a Garter Relay with a Twist. The student leaders were divided into four teams, with the first representative of each fitting a garter through their body reading a set prompt of actions to perform on stage, and the others imitating their actions based only on what they saw. As the teams saw little success, the Student Council Officers took this opportunity to teach about the importance of attentiveness and presence of mind when performing time-pressured tasks with a team.
The Student Council officers gave lectures on how to effectively perform proper project management, offering key terms in the science, essential principles managers need to know, and the life cycle of working on a project. Following this lesson was another session that intensively focused on the specifics of task delegation, particularly delegation strategies, the appropriate times for delegation, and the best steps to delegate.
Ryza felt both onsite and online participants learned plenty from the seminar’s teachings and enjoyed them. She explained that “everything [the Student Council] discussed helped me strengthen [my] existing leadership skills.”
The workshop proceeded to a competitive culminating activity: Straw Tower Building. Though not a contest of speed or height, the two groups oversaw and actively participated in creating the most stable tower together using all the skills they learned prior. Quick thinking and hilarity ensued as both teams strived to competitively outdo the other, and members of each positively encouraged their teammates to perform their best for victory.
“I really had to communicate with the other leaders and achieve this one goal together,” Seorin said about the activity which involved similarly-minded student leaders joined as one team.
VOLT participants individually created a Gantt chart that aligned their learnings and mastered their skills in planning and delegating digitally. Their culminating activity was collated and evaluated by the Student Council officers.
Student Council President Myung Jun Yoo wrapped up the seminar with a summary of all the topics and values discussed. The Student Council awarded certificates of participation and recognition to all involved student leaders, and a photo opportunity sealed off the afternoon seminar.
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