A lesson in democracy, leadership and communication skills

Twenty-one students participated in a sometimes heated debate on the color scheme for our T-Shirts. While our intended plan was to have students do a series of team building activities after a quick discussion on shirt orders, we spent over an hour working out a satisfactory agreement.

Taking advantage of a teachable event, taking turns, listening to others' opinions, speaking respectfully, compromising and being assertive were all part of today's learning. We made comparisons to the legislative process and to the failure of our state leadership to come to a budget agreement.

The T-Shirt order means a lot to the students. They worked hard through the frustration to come to an agreement.

We also decided to postpone the Mississippi clean-up picnic until later in the summer or next fall, as we are running out of school year.

May 4 Meeting

One of our activities this meeting was to have student create and vote on a design for a club T-Shirt. This was the favorite.

Another activity involved adding to our bulletin board and creating an analogy between people of the world and money of the world. Click on the pictures to make them larger for easier reading.

We also talked about our year end river clean-up/ picnic. We are asking the High School club to participate with us. Were hoping a combined activity will transition our 8th grade members to the high school club.

10 students participated in these activities.