Freshmen student council leads by example
All across the nation student councils provide opportunities for students to get involved with their schools through activities and projects that promote and encourage leadership, service, student voice and engagement.
Freshmen student council members at Upper St. Clair High School are committed to ensuring future classes hit the ground running as they transition from middle to high school. Eight freshmen descended on Fort Couch Middle School on Friday, March 10, 2017, to work with seventh and eighth grade student council members.
“This was a completely student-driven endeavor led by freshmen Class President Joey Ioli,” Brooke Tarcson, USC activities coordinator, said. “The freshmen senators worked on the agenda for the workshop for four months during their weekly high school student council meetings.”
Eighth graders focused on the transition to high school student council including how to get involved and make a difference in high school.
“This workshop was beneficial in a variety of ways,” Katie Gibson, Fort Couch student council sponsor, said. “Eighth graders met with a few current members and could see what student council would look like at the high school. This conversation made them excited about all of the possibilities at the high school and hopefully will make their transition easier.”
Seventh grade student council members spent their time together working on choosing a student council motto for Fort Couch and brainstorming ideas.
“Seventh grade was able to spend time creating an identity for our student council and collaborated to come up with ideas to use at Fort Couch in the future,” Mrs. Gibson said. “Both grades were led by the ninth graders and were challenged to work together as a team and to think outside the box and share their ideas on how they could utilize student council to benefit the school.”
The freshmen conducted team building games, answered questions and shared the high school’s student council motto: UNITE voices, SERVE the community, COMMIT to progress.
“I think it was significant and beneficial because they talked to us a lot about high school and student council in ninth grade, which made me sure I wanted to get involved,” eighth grader Caroline Sandford, said. “I really enjoyed it overall and thought it was a good experience.”
The concepts of teamwork and collaboration were reinforced throughout the experience. As seventh grader Caroline Michalski shared, “There is no ‘I’ in team but there is an ‘us’ in USC.”
Freshmen student council members that participated included Grace Elwood, Gavin Genter, Joey Ioli, Yash Jajoo, Dev Patel, Gabi Spina, Sara Steve and Juli Tarcson.
