By Joseph Langley and Autumn Pecarovich
Leadership is behind some of the biggest events at Minarets, including school dances and rallies and spend countless hours setting up and tearing down these events. With all these big events happening, you wonder, how does it get done? The leadership team has many duties across the campus, collaborating with other students and professionals to bring their event ideas to life. With leadership applications rolling out soon here are the answers to your questions.
To get more insight on the processes on the leadership system we interviewed Ben Regonini, the leadership advisor, he spoke about what leadership is and what they do; “We basically create culture on campus. We run a lot of the activities when it comes to dances, when it comes to, promos. We've worked with Ortiz a lot when it comes to promoting these ideas. Rallies we set up, we have a link crew team that goes to the middle school and it talks to the kids about life and high school and what to expect. We also are liaisons with teachers. Overall, just to make Minarets better.” Regonini spoke on his role in the leadership team, “So I'm the overseer of all of these different events that we do, whether it's link crew, whether it's dances, whether it's rallies.”
The application and essay prompt for the selection of Leadership students for the 2019-2020 school year will be the week of April 29 to May 3. After essays are read and judged, students are selected for interviews and are picked based on their performance. Regonini talked about the process of selecting students; “You can either apply for leadership, in which case you'll have to write an essay about why you would like to be in leadership, and your qualifications. In addition, we sometimes send out invitations to kids we think may be good for leadership and then they'd go through the same process and the qualifications.” He stated there is a written set of criteria for picking leadership members and they look at a students involvement in sports and other activities, grades, personality, and recommendations from teachers. When asked if there are external factors taken into consideration for the selection process he said, “Yes, we do for sure, because we know that you guys only get a few choices when it comes to electives, and we want to make sure that students get the electives they want. We try to make it happen in some way, shape, or form.”
After being selected, the students have duties that vary week to week, said Regonini, “Each week it is different than every other week. So when we've got the events coming up, we've got different tasks that need to be dealt with. Posters-
digital and physical- promoting in classes during pro period, ticket prices, designing themes and then planning for rallies and link crew.” Elaborating on Link Crew, Regonini explained, “This time tomorrow we're going to Hillside to let those kids know who we are, where we're from, and we play some games with them. Then we usually have some sort of deep discussion with them, which is led by Chacon because she is the counselor for the district.” Link Crew also helps incoming freshmen build relationships with the students here; because the students in Link Crew are closer to them in age than teachers or staff and therefore are easier to relate to. When planning for dances and rallies, leadership students vote on the specifications. For dances, they vote on the themes, and for rallies, they vote on rally games and the students participating in them. These choices come from student requests, and they are often consulted with before beforehand.
When asked about community service leadership does he said, “We just got in contact with Ronald McDonald House to work with them. A lot of kids want to do ASPCA work. We've told Poverello House that we'd like to work with them.”
Applications will be available in the office during the week of April 29 to May 3. If you are interested in serving Minarets in the Leadership team, start thinking about how you exemplify the Minarets six C’s and practice good interview etiquette. Ask teachers, parents, and research on your own about how to be the best young professional you can.