Student leaders look to make a difference at CCMS

By James Grob, jgrob@charlescitypress.com

Charles City Middle School seventh-grader Erik Gavitt and his friend Brayden Ellis had a question.

Why didn’t the middle school have a flag out front? After all, most schools do.

“It’s one thing we noticed our school didn’t have,” Gavitt said. “We talked about it little bit, because we both have family members who served in the Army and the flag is very important to us.”

Rather than criticize their school district for not having a flag, the two took a positive approach and decided to do something about it.

“We are getting plans together to put up a flagpole,” Gavitt said. “Our goal is to raise $7,000 for a budget to do it properly, get the cement pad poured and get about a 30-foot pole and all the pulley systems.”

So far, the students have talked to the Charles City Lions Club, gone before the school board, and they are planning to give a presentation to the Rotary Club to try to raise the money.

The flag project is one small part of the new student leadership program in development in the Charles City School District.

“We’re talking about creating multiple tiers of leadership,” CCMS Principal Joe Taylor told the school board during a presentation last week. “We want to create a system that is going to be purposeful, leading and change our rhetoric around what it means to be a leader. We want to be leaders of leaders.”

Gavitt said he and several friends are involved in student leadership positions at the school.

“We do things like helping the janitor out, stacking chairs, washing tables — just spare jobs around the school during our spare time, like at recess, when we’re not having to be anyplace,” he said. “We have the ability to do our own leadership positions and do stuff around the school.”

Eighth-grade leaders have a social committee, which is involved in organizing school dances and other social events for our school.

“We’re helping out with the community, helping students get more involved, not just in our classes,” said Kalia Richards, an eighth-grade student leader. “We want to try to have something that changes things, where we don’t have straight rules all the time, where we can have more fun with our school.”

Leadership by example can be something as simple as picking up trash after a varsity football game.

For years, fifth-graders, led by teacher Erik Hoefer, have been cleaning up the football stands after games on Mondays, This year, instead of waiting for Monday, student leaders decided to pick up trash immediately after the game.

“As a district … student leadership was one of those things where we knew it was a gold mine,” said CCMS Associate Principal Tom Harskamp. “We want to teach them, at all levels, the skills that it takes and the skills inside them.”

Harskamp said that so far, the student leadership initiative is just scratching the surface.

“We have pockets of student leaders, and talked about student leadership a lot,” he said. “As an administrative and teacher team, we came to a simple definition — ‘our family needs the best version of you.’ A lot of students have risen up and said they want to be a part of it.”

Although they haven’t “officially” started the rollout of the student leadership program, students have talked about it on the radio, to local civic organizations and in front of the school board.

“Going in front of the school board was terrifying,” said Richard. “We’re doing it on our own. We come up with the ideas. We have to ask, but if it’s appropriate we get permission.”

Students who step into leadership roles receive a “sweet bracelet” that says “Leader” on it, and Harskamp said the district has put some different things together. Leadership can be something as simple as being a note runner, a tour guide or a student ambassador.

“Even a simple thing like answering a phone in the classroom,” Harskamp said. “A teacher doesn’t have to stop the instruction, they can keep teaching, and a student can relay the message.”

“If they dream it, we find a way for them to be able to do it,” Taylor added. “We want to get high levels of students involved in community service, leading others and just being the best versions of themselves.”

Taylor said the next step is to get out and see what other schools are doing with student leadership, and make it a “system-wide thing” in Charles City.

Students, teachers and administrators have already visited the Ed Thomas Leadership Academy and will be visiting other campuses around the state where some of these programs have been implemented. A short-term goal is to get 80 percent of the student body involved in a leadership role of some sort this year, while a long-term goal is to eventually develop Charles City’s own leadership academy for grades five through 12.

“Great leaders include the excluded,” Harskamp said. “I think we’re trying to include our kids to try and be a part of something bigger than themselves. The sky is the limit. We’ll figure out what our students want, and what we think they need.”

As for the new flag project, Gavitt said he wants to build a flagpole that will last. Although they haven’t done any fundraising yet, they’ve already gotten several good ideas from the community.

“We’ve had somebody from the junkyard come up and tell us that he has poles that can be reconditioned,” Gavitt said. “If we want to do a memorial at the bottom for soldiers who have been in Charles City, instead of doing a plaque, we can do a bench or boulder with something on it memorializing everyone who served from Charles City.”

Gavitt also mentioned the possibility of including a plaque with a list of donors, and the possibility of raising some of the funds through school dances — organized by other student leaders, such as Richard.

“Leadership means going out and doing what you can to make the area around you a better place,” Gavitt said. “It’s showing others the best part of you.”

Richard said that being a leader means doing your best to make positive changes.

“Leadership is making a difference,” she said. “A lot of people don’t always see me as a leader, but I try to be the best I can be.”