by Stefan Chamorro, Grade 11, Member of the Student Life Committee of Student Council -

Every year in the first few weeks of school, student leaders meet with CIS Principals and leaders at a weekend leadership retreat at the Hilton hotel. The aim of the retreat is to encourage leadership best practices and hone leadership skills of participating student leaders. The weekend is the time when the year ahead is planned, under the guidance of our Secondary Principals, Ms. Morgan and Head of School.

Thanks to Mr. Radojkovich and Ms. Morgan, we learnt about responsibility, leadership and commitment, through activities such as collaborative planning sessions, leadership and role-playing games, icebreakers and charades (where we learnt how to communicate ideas without using words).

While we learnt about what makes a good leader and how to improve our leadership skills, we also found out which effective problem solving techniques leaders should implement when things don’t go well. For example, how do you react when there is a crisis? How do you solve a serious problem while also making sure there is (will be) no backlash? We engaged in active role play and improvisation in order to apply new knowledge, and had an opportunity to implement some of our newly acquired skills as we moved into our smaller committee groups and conducted planning meetings.

After our brainstorming and planning sessions, each committee engaged in a hip and full-out rapping experience where we were tested to communicate our plans through rap songs. This is probably as embarrassing as it gets - I don’t think anything could have topped this! However, in the years to come, these embarrassing moments will remind us of what we learnt, and the fun we had as senior CIS leaders.

Grade 11 representative Swarali Parasnis was one of the student leaders who pushed for change for the better during last year’s conference. She was the creator of the student-tutor session during SMART, where students who have trouble in certain subjects could ask for a volunteer tutor. This was one of the crowning achievements that these student council leadership retreats had produced.

The student council’s role is to increase opportunities for CIS students at large, and it is our responsibility to address the needs of our community, and solve problems. We, the leaders, will work together to make this school a better place for everyone. Let’s all stop neglecting problems and dare to speak up to make a change.

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