A problem in your Council is only a problem when you don’t do something to fix it…
The members of your Student Council should always be acting as a leader and set a positive example to the school. If an incident happens where a member isn’t setting a positive example to the school and not treating others with respect, then staff and students look down upon the council. Teachers are noticing it within our school, and have brought these problems to our adviser’s attention. Our adviser then addressed the issue to our Student Council.
This is basically a problem of RESPECT. Student Council is there to serve - not to be served. Student Council members need to set a positive example on the entire student body, and that comes partly from respecting others. Part of the problem is that the student body now looks at our Student Council as “stuck-up,” and the perception is out there that the Student Council thinks they are better than others. This is a major problem, so we addressed it right away, and our adviser thought up an activity/project to correct this problem…and it’s working.
We are currently working on this problem through an activity. Our adviser had us each make an origami ball. Once everyone finished making their origamis, our adviser then had us write, on a slip of paper, an incident where we (personally) acted less than leader-like, or an incident where we disrespected a teacher and/or student. We then put our paper into our origami ball. Our president collected everyone’s origamis into a box, and then she facilitated a sort of “group session.” Our president would pull out the slips of paper that had our confidential notes on them, and read them out loud to the class – but nobody knew whose it was. Once our president was done reading it, the person who wrote it had the choice to speak up and explain it, which most did, but they did not have to. Then, as a group, we brainstormed solutions to help this person with this problem. As people explained their own problem, many people shared the same feelings, and this also truly made our council MUCH closer as a group. We had enough trust in others to talk about what we did wrong. This activity was not only helping us with our leadership problems, but it was building relationships and TRUST with each other. I truly believe that this activity is working. Our problems are pointed out, we discuss great solutions to each problem, and then the person (optionally) explains how they will implement a solution to correct this problem.
For example, one of our problems was that we have way too many things to get done and have little time to do it. This makes us much more irritable, and when a person gets in our way, say for example, a slow-moving hallway, we tend to snap. We don’t mean to, but that is how we try to cope with our stress. Someone suggested yoga – for them it really helps.
Disrespecting our family was another issue that came up. We tend to take out our emotions, our problems, and our stress on our family, because no matter what, they still have to love you. And we discussed a variety of different solutions to this problem.
Another problem we had was holding in our emotions. We hold in what we’re feeling either because we might feel it’s a sign of weakness, that we’d be whining to someone, that whoever is listening to you doesn’t sincerely care, or that we can fix it ourselves. This problem may lead to another problem, like taking your emotion out on a friend. I think that everyone can relate to this problem in some way. The two most ‘agreed-upon’ solutions were physical exercise and talking to someone.
Of all of the issues/problems we discussed, this next one was one of the major problems: some people don’t get along with their teacher or have a problem with them and they disrespected/confronted the teacher in front of the entire class. Now that you’ve done this in front of an entire audience, they then question what kind of leaders make up the Student Council and it also gives them the “okay” to confront their teacher also, because you’ve set the bad example. We discussed many solutions, including addressing the teacher in private, always keeping calm and never disrespecting them.
Hopefully, you don’t have this problem – a lack of respect. Odds are, however, ALL of us face this problem (in some way). A lack of respect by leaders in Student Council is a problem, but it’s only a problem if you don’t do something to fix it. I encourage you to try something like what we did, an activity, to correct your mistakes in the future. I truly, truly believe that this is working. Doing something like what we did will make your Student Council more positive and closer as a group. Individually, it will make you a better leader and you will set a better example to others.
In Leadership,
Ryan Thomas
MASC Center 1 Representative
