Leadership Retreat Paves the Way for Eighth Graders to Step Up

“The retreat is a seed of hope planted every year for the next upcoming group of eighth graders to grow and tend,” said Vanda Spinola, a Middle Years Spanish Teacher who helped chaperone the retreat. “Those tents scattered on the lower meadow say something to onlooking seventh and sixth graders, who think: ‘That will be us!.’”
  
The experience gave eighth graders the opportunity to step back from their regular daily routines, take some time to get to know each other better, and contemplate the year ahead. Students began crafting a leadership statement on our final day of the retreat. They suggested language to describe a good leader, then honed, refined, and debated the semantics, eventually whittling down the list to seven key elements. In defining the type of leader they want to be, these 13- and 14-year-olds made statements about the world they want to live in. 

“In many ways, the dialogue is the point, and the final list secondary,” said Middle Years Principal Matt Nuttall, who was also on the retreat. “It is the work they put in to find common ground and discuss the merits of each suggested leadership quality that demonstrates that Ethical Leaders at HMS are ‘considerate and curious about other perspectives’ and ‘engaged in active problem-solving.’”
 
Each element of the retreat is important and, in total, provides a beautiful representation of the High Meadows experience. Students prepped and cooked meals, climbed rock walls, supported each other when they struggled, navigated morning and bedtime routines with friends new and old, problem-solved tent sleeping arrangements, looked after their own dietary needs, managed disagreements, thought critically about their roles as individuals and as a collective at HMS, and came together as a class. That’s a whole lot of learning squeezed into a couple of days.