Student council (StuCo) will participate in the Texas Association of Student Council’s state conference on March 29 at Loews Arlington Convention Center. The conference involves keynotes, category competitions and breakout sessions with other student councils.
“All the [large] Texas schools go there [so] it’s a big learning opportunity,” StuCo president Amy Leon said. “It’s mainly [a conference] where you learn how to build up your student council and how to become a better leader.”
The keynotes include guest speakers who talk on leadership and common student council problems. The category competitions include top project, top video and top socials. StuCo submitted “The ‘I’ in kind” video for the top video contest before the conference.
“We looked into [submitting] for the other competitions,” Leon said. “But we were really busy with a bunch of other things, and [submitting is] mostly a bunch of paperwork you have to complete. Based on previous years, we know that we do a lot at our school, and we sometimes were not validated at TASC StuCo because the paperwork is super specific. What we do matters, even though we didn’t submit to the other competitions. It is definitely something that we will look into in the future.”
The breakout sessions divide each school’s student council into small groups and then group them with other school’s small groups; they also divide advisers into their own groups. The groups talk about project ideas, work through practice problems and exchange helpful tips to other schools.
“All of these events come with a lot of preparation and a lot of backstage work that not a lot of the public sees,” StuCo treasurer Cara Shen said. “Being able to share [this preparation] with other schools is important because some schools may have trouble in those areas, so it’s good for us to help them out.”
In order to participate in the state conference, StuCo gives a report of the events it created under certain categories: pride and patriotism, drugs, alcohol, safety and health, energy and environment, community service and outstanding student council.
“Energy and environment is one that we struggle with in a really big school,” StuCo sponsor Jennifer Russell said. “In a smaller school, it’s more feasible to run a recycling program or community garden. We try to do all of these things, but it’s hard for us as a big school in a small city. So [I] try to reach out to other 6A schools in my adviser meetings to ask what they do so we can do the most with our student council.”
If StuCo has enough of these events, it can be rewarded with sweepstakes and the opportunity to go to the state conference. The events they put within the report have to have been made within the past year up to the last conference.
“I love state,” Russel said. “I was really shy to travel the first couple of years, but now I can’t imagine not doing it. When submitting our reports we were on the edge of our seats, but we know we do so much and [it feels] like a reward for us. [StuCo] loves it [and] I really love it. It’s just so cool to watch them [make friends outside of] LISD.”
