S.H.S. student council recently went to Byron High School to attend their second leadership conference. The spring conference was hosted at Byron High School in Byron, Illinois. On April 2, students from the Northwestern School Districts student councils arrived at Byron High School around 9 a.m. to attend this conference.

  One the club favorites is the fall and spring leadership conferences they attend with youth speaker, A’rick Jackson. Jackson is an educational speaker, who was also the speaker at the fall meeting and teaches students about taking their leadership skills “to another level.” The S.H.S. student council saw him in both the fall and this spring on April 2 at their leadership conferences.  

   While at this meeting, students got to listen to Jackson’s lecture, play games with other schools’ student councils, build new relationships, and overall leave with a better understanding of leadership. 

  Junior Patrick Riley, who attended the conference, said, “It was fun and I learned a lot about both myself and leadership within a group of people.”

  Many student council members liked both the fall and spring conference and believed it got them out of their comfort zone. They said it helped them learn valuable skills to do well moving forward in life. 

 This conference was held from 9:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. and filled with many games that were specifically chosen to get students out of their comfort zones. A popular game that helped students break out of their shell was one where everyone lined up in two lines facing each other a couple feet apart, and one at a time a student would go down the middle of the lines and dance the entire length of the line. 

 While this made some students nervous, everyone had fun. Although club advisors didn’t get a chance, S.H.S. student council advisor Nicole Schlemmer admitted she “had some moves ready just in case.”

 Overall, the spring leadership conference that the student council attended seemingly was a huge success. Conferences like this help to build many new friendships within students in our school and others as well as teaching helpful leadership skills.