The Importance of Student Leaders

As this year's Student Council Elections near, we wanted to thank our current STUCO representatives and emphasize the importance of Student Council to our Visitation School Community.

This year our STUCO reps have worked hard to come up with the first ever Student Honor Code, they planned and executed an amazing Spirit Week and have raised money for Turning Point who's focus is supporting families dealing with long term illnesses such as Cancer. They have shared concerns for the student community and have looked to ways to be leaders in changing the environment to support anti-bullying and inclusion efforts at Visitation. We are very proud of all their hard work and dedication to making Visitation School a great place to be a student.

This year we have had record numbers of young students running for student council. We are excited to welcome on some new class representatives after the elections Monday. Because of this influx in young leaders we have decided to move to having homeroom representatives in 4th and 5th grade to encourage these leaders to continue to aim for their goals, increasing their rep positions from 2 to 6 . This year we have also seen a decline in older students willing to take on the roles of officers and class representatives, with this predicament in mind we are asking you to talk to your students about the importance of being a leader, especially in their school community.

The skills your student will learn as a student leader will prepare them to be a strong leader later in life. It will teach them the values of empathy, respect, pride, responsibility and various other traits and values. It will teach them the importance of their voice and to participate in their civic duty before they go out into the world as voters. We encourage you to encourage them to take the first step and run for student council.

Speeches will take place on Monday morning, those interested should submit their speech to Ms. Porter, Mrs. Drummond or Mrs. Jerome by Monday morning to participate. We can be reached at the emails below:

ejerome@school.visitation.org

jporter@school.visitation.org

kdrummond@school.visitation.org

As a final reflection we would like to share what our students feel participating in Student Council taught them about being a leader: