Junior Katherine Burke was selected to go to a leadership conference at West Point in New York, called the Frances Hesselbein Student Leadership Program, for one week in November. The program was designed to identify exemplary students through their participation in the Student 2 Student (S2S) program. The Leadership program offers students the chance to learn quality leadership skills, and have an unbelievable experience.
“[In order to attend], we had to write an essay, and we had to get three letters of recommendation. One from a peer, one from our S2S leader – who is Mrs. Spurgeon – and from one from another source, other than parents. Then we also had a phone interview after they looked through the selections,” Burke said.
Getting into the conference is no easy thing. Out of nearly seventy applicants, only ten people were chosen.
“There were ten of us, so it was a really small group. Normally, there is around fourteen or so people. There were about sixty-five applicants, and they chose us ten. There were two people from Texas, one person from Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, New York, Washington, Missouri and Germany. So we came from all over the place,” Burke said.
The classes the students went through were very diverse and they varied with each activity they participated in.
“On the first day we had a class in creating our creed. The creed that we chose for our group was that ‘A leader must lead with his mind, body, heart and spirit.’ I think a leader should be someone who you look up to and want to be like them, and how they act. Then the next day we had a leadership in action course. Then we went on a history tour around West Point, which was amazing, we got to see all the buildings. And then we found out what our leadership traits were, and went through those, and learned how to build up the traits we weren’t as good at and how to use the ones we were good at,” Burke said.
Many of the courses offered in-class learning, but there were also classes that used computer simulation to put students in real-life leadership situations.
“One of the days, we had a computer-simulated battle, where we had to get our troops in to secure a village. After we did that, they took us to a simulated battle field in a room, and we got to shoot machine guns,” Burke said. “They were real, but they had the bullets taken out of them, so they were just shooting air, and that was fun. They taught us how to shoot them, and then they would turn on the scene, and we had people running at us.”
Some of the classes that the students went through didn’t just teach them about leadership. They taught them what leadership is and how to apply it.
“We had a class by Major Lennax, and it was about putting leadership traits into action, and it was like, okay we’ve been to a class before where they teach you how to what leadership traits are, but never one where you learn how to put them into action. He said that ‘…if you claim to be hospitable, then you had better show me when you’ve done something hospitable or show me when you had people in your home,’ and that really made you want to put those traits into action, and try to be that person, instead of just claiming to be that person. We learned how to be a good person, which more inspired you to be a leader and a good person. I think you need more inspiration than teaching sometimes, because if you just learn it, and you aren’t going to do anything with it, then it kind of loses the point, ” Burke said.
Meeting new people at the conference also enhanced the students opportunities to get inspired and learn new things from others experiences.
“We got to meet a lot of people, which was fun. We met Mrs. Frances Hesselbein, and she was this little spunky old lady, she was a lot of fun. She was just, really inspiring to listen to and to hear what she’s done in her life, and everything. We were probably there for a long time, but it didn’t feel like a long time, because we were just so wrapped around her. The superintendent of West Point came in and talk to us when she was talking to us, and that was neat too. We also met someone who works in the Secretary of Defense’s office, which was cool,” Burke said.
The entire time left no room for regrets or second thoughts.
“It was just a really cool experience. I couldn’t imagine a better experience. They told us at the end of the conference that you better not have any regrets. So at the end, they talked to us one on one about our experience and what we did, and they asked “Did you have any regrets?” And I was like, no. It was just amazing.” Burke said.
