The New Richmond Exempted Village School District takes its
mission statement seriously and a recent Leadership Conference at New Richmond
Middle School was designed to help achieve the part of the statement that promises
to graduate students able to demonstrate confidence, leadership and
responsibility.
NREVSD Supt. Adam Bird tasked NRMS principal Court Lilly and
counselor Angela Gray with developing a leadership program for middle school
students and student leaders from the district’s fifth and sixth grades.
"We started this experience for 2 reasons,” noted
Bird. “First, developing students who will be leaders one day is a part of
our mission statement. Second, it gives us an opportunity to expose 5th
and 6th graders to New Richmond Middle School and ease that transition.”
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New Richmond Middle School counselor Angela Gray and school principal
Court Lilly (seated), who have been tasked with developing a leadership
program for NREVSD middle school and fifth and sixth grade students,
discuss leadership ideas with Locust Corner Elementary principal Joe Roach. |
They selected nationally acclaimed youth leadership
development speaker Ted Wiese to kick start the program. Wiese, who is
headquartered in Carmel, Ind., presented his Challenge Leadership Program to 40
students from New Richmond Middle School and 32 students from the district’s
three elementary schools.
“I
cannot brag enough on the program Ted Weise provided at NRMS,” said Gray. “From
the moment the students walked into the building they were excited and engaged!
Through hands-on activities and fun-loving dialog, Ted brought out the leader
in each individual student. It was great to see such a mixture of individuals
come together and work side by side on the challenges that Ted put forth. I’m
very much looking forward to the students applying what they learned from this
experience to their lives.”
Click on the Play button below to watch video highlights of Wiese's program.
Students were divided into 9-member teams who competed in a
variety of contests designed to promote skills needed to become a productive member of a team and to emerge as a
leader and to work as a productive member of a team.
“Our program is designed for a different leader will emerge
from each of our contests,” said Wiese. “Our goal is to get everyone thinking
about team building and working together for a common goal and then have
everyone develop into a leadership role.”
The Leadership Conference wasn’t just for the positive
classroom role models.
“I told our Middle School teachers to give me a list of
student leaders in their classrooms, whether it was for negative or positive reasons,” said Lilly. “If it was for
negative leadership, I wanted them in this program to show them what they could
accomplish by becoming a positive leader.”