CARE
All around me, I see people working together for the better of themselves, each other, and our community. I continue to strive to apart of that and contribute what I can to the improvement of my student organization, SOC, Thomas Nelson as a whole, and my community. There are many things that play a role in caring for each other and, thankfully, I have been able to be apart of most of those initiatives. Like I said in my last blog post, I started the semester off with continuing my planning for 8th grade RUSH. This was a huge initiative and started my semester off on the right foot. This was also very helpful to my S.O. because we had 17 eighth graders sign up to join the Track and Field team. I was able to give their contact information to Coach Hoyes and we have seen several of those faces come out and practice with us in the past few weeks. As the season is just getting started and we are having everyone come together from their winter sports, I am excited to see the new athletes who will join and how they can contribute to our team. I am also excited to be able to come together as a team and serve our community partner. We have one event that is in the works and we will hopefully be able to plan the rest of it out with our partner to be able to better connect with them. There is a lot of growth going on for our team and it will only continue from here.
As far as SOC, there have been a lot of initiatives going on that I have been able to be apart of and help lead. One of the most recent projects we have started is our collaboration with Nelson County's Student Advisory Council. This collaboration is something that I am really looking forward to in our future work together because it is so important to build a relationship with our sister school. We already have an initiative planned and the more it comes together, the better it has become. There is still a lot to do but we have been working hard to get it all together and I am excited to see the result. From this collaboration, they have started to invite us to be apart of other initiatives. For example, this past week, they invited the SOC officers to join them at their First Responders Breakfast and we were able help serve breakfast and connect with our First Responders of Nelson County.
CONNECT
Throughout the second semester, I have tried to focus on effectively communicating and connecting with SOC members, my SO and sponsors. The first opportunity I had to connect was with the community through the 8th grade RUSH. I had a lot of interested 8th graders and now that track has started, I have seen several of those same 8th graders come out to practice, consistently. This feels like a huge accomplishment, even if there are only about 5 or 6 eighth graders coming because I worked hard to encourage them and connect with them so they would feel comfortable enough to take a healthy risk and try something new. This has set the foundation for them and will hopefully help them to continue being involved and taking healthy risks. Aside from the eighth grade RUSH, our own RUSH that we hosted at the beginning of the year has also brought out a lot of new faces. With a large graduating class last year, I was very worried that track and field would not have a lot of athletes to compete. However, this years turn out far exceeded my expectations and I could not be happier. We have a ton of true talent coming out and I have seen many who came during RUSH and asked good questions about being apart of track and field. Had we not connected with them, they may not have come out and been apart of a team like track and field.
There has also been several opportunities to connect within SOC. Earlier in the year, Caroline Boone, Grace Thurman, and I had the opportunity to go to OKH Middle School and teach them how to Make Art within their google slides and presentations in their Leadership Dynamics class. This was an awesome opportunity to connect with potential SOC members but also with Future Generals and show them skills that we have learned so they can put them into their work. Another way I have connected in SOC is through the Nelson County Collaboration. We have been working to connect with each other to build a sense of community and the Battle of the Generations basketball game is going to be an awesome way to bring the community together.
CREATE
When I think about my team, I think about what it is that I want to create for and with them. There is always ways to grow and become better as a group, especially with many new members. One thing that Coach Hoyes and I have created together is the text message system. Before, he was using emails to communicate with parents and some of the team and I would transfer the emails onto the Blog. However, there was still a gap in that connection with Coach and the athletes. Through the text message system, Hoyes only has to send out one message and it comes to all athletes who have put their name and number on the list at RUSH or at the pre-season meeting. It has been very effective and improved our amount of communication and clarity for cancellations or locations of meets and practices. One thing I have been extremely proud of so far this season is the GROWTH. We have had so many fearless athletes come out and try events that I haven't even thought about trying in my six years of running track...and they're amazing at those events! Not only have we seen tremendous growth in individuals on the team but also for our team as a whole as we have had several athletes join us to add to our family and grow in numbers as well. This has provided a great base for future service projects and team bonding opportunities. One thing I need to work really hard on in quarter four is getting together a service project for the end of the year. We need to come together as an entire team to serve our community and now that we have a pretty set team, there is a lot of opportunities for us to get involved.
One thing I have had a large role in helping to Create through SOC is the Generation Game with NCHS. The opportunity to be able to work with NCHS has been awesome and it is so good to see the two schools come together to work as ONE. Together, we have created an opportunity for the community to get involved and see the two schools come together with the goal of having the community support BOTH schools through this experience. We have created this event with the idea that it would continue on to be an annual event and provide a way for the schools to come together at the end of each year. Also through SOC, I have helped to create the Back in Action Dashboard for SOC members to put in their action plans for the day or week. It has helped to keep students accountable for their work and ask for help if they are stuck somewhere. After spring break, we plan to continue to improve upon it by adding short term and long term projects and have students indicate where they are working. Another thing I created was the ACT care for the Juniors before taking their ACT. This was something I think they enjoyed and made them feel encouraged before the ACT and I hope that it is continued on in the next years.
No comments:
Post a Comment