On December 5, Sewanahaka High School attended the Third Annual Leadership Symposium at Carle Place High School. This year, students from Sewanahaka Leadership, FCCLA, and Student Council joined 15 other schools across Long Island to learn about leadership and participate in team-building activities throughout the day.
The event started with engaging icebreaker activities hosted by Sewanahaka Leadership students. This consisted of collaborative exercises such as the trust rope, in which a long rope is tied into a circle and students pull back from all sides to keep one another from falling. Another collaborative game, called “Pizza Delivery,” required students to balance a pizza pan with ping pong balls while walking across the space.
After students got a chance to introduce themselves with the icebreakers, they were regrouped for the next phase of the event, meeting the keynote speaker. This year’s speaker was Dr. Dave Bennardo, a councilman from the Town of Huntington. His speech covered his history of living in Huntington with his family for more than 20 years and his experience serving as principal of Harborfields High School and superintendent of South Huntington. He also spoke about what it takes to be an effective leader and how young minds can start to prepare for being a leader in the world.
The floor was then open to the students, where various high schools gave presentations on the unique activities and characteristics that their school has to offer. Carle Place High School shared a particularly interesting annual event they host called Dancing With the Frogs. Here, students choreograph a dance and have a number of weeks to teach it to a chosen staff member. Then, teachers perform the dances to compete for the ultimate Lily Pad Trophy. Presentations like these provide the participating high schools with a chance to highlight what makes their school community inclusive and distinct, and ideas that other schools can incorporate into their own for improvement.
For the last segment of the day, students from different schools were randomly paired together in groups to go into breakout discussions focusing on leadership and strengthening the school community. Advisors from all the high schools were also placed into a breakout group to brainstorm ways to support their students’ engagement and growth. The discussions eventually wrapped up, everyone packed up to head back to their home schools with the knowledge that they all gained about how to become a better leader to improve their communities. It is no doubt that students and advisors all over Long Island look forward to participating in this event again next year.
