Definitions of Leadership

There are many ways to define leadership.  In the final piece of your presentation, we are asking you to provide your personal definition of leadership.  Then, we would like you to identify a person in your life who you feel lives this definition and tell us about that person.

To begin our discussion on leadership, we would like you to read through the following text.  Make sure to focus on "Another Definition in Progress" through "Insight: The 20th Century."

Click here for the reading

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Finding Your Passion, Your True North

"Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

In school and in work there is an epidemic.  It is far-reaching and is threatening to undermine the progress that many of you have been striving for; it causes people to burn-out and turn away from jobs and projects they used to love.  We have all experienced its symptoms, blame, apathy, procrastination, frustration, and the most devastating, negativity.  When a person has no passion for what they do, it can pull a piece of the foundation from the foundation of a fragile house of cards.

We work around it, we take on more responsibility, we complain, or we shut down.  There are many avenues that can accommodate or avoid dealing with an issue that is stopping us from achieving outstanding results.  But, there is a more proactive manner in which we can synergize and energize our committees.

Last class we talked with you about finding our true north and putting that true north into our mission statement for our life.  Talk briefly about your progress in working through your mission statement

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The Back to School Assembly

In our first week back to school.  Leadership seized another opportunity to build upon the culture of spirit at Oak Park with the Back to School Assembly.  Last year, the Leadership class reflected back and wanted to improve issues such as timing, preparation for the assembly games, and sound inconsistencies to make progress for this year.  How did we do?  What went well?  What should we improve?  Or, what should we remember for next year?

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Beautification Day

You all did an incredible job on Friday.  Oak Park looks great and is ready to welcome back all of the students and staff for the 2014-2015 school year.  Here are a few of the pictures from the afternoon.

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Oak Park Beautification Day

Friday, August 1st, is Oak Park Beautification Day.  We have a lot of events planned this year that will help to make Oak Park look GREAT as students and staff come back to school over the next few weeks.  We will meet at Oak Park at 9 am (We will have donuts) and we should be finished by early afternoon.

OP Beautification Day 2012

To make this day a success, we have to have a HUGE TURNOUT FROM YOU!!!  You will be working along side your committee members on the following tasks:

1. Painting the Boots:  Norman's boots always get a fresh coat of paint in the summer so that his    prints are nice and bright for students as they come back to school.  
2. Teacher/Student Parking Spot Logos:  This group will be painting an OP logo on parking lot spaces to identify staff and student parking spaces.  This will designate staff only parking, while at the same time, reserve spaces for students on all sides of the building to ensure western access to the building for our fine art students.  
3. Tree Patrol:  As some of you may have noticed, we have some not so alive trees on our campus.  These trees need to be removed and recorded (so that we can later replace the trees).
4. Flower Beds:  We need to clean up the flower beds around the campus.  These include the flower beds near the main doors, west doors, northeast sign, and the baseball fields.  

With all that we have going on, Oak Park will look great this Fall.  See you next Friday!

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Summer Update

On Friday, June 27th Mr. Pabon and I met with the student body officers.  Kelly, Tiffany, Lauren, Becca, and Olivia have done an incredible job this summer of setting up an awesome school year.  They are excited and I know that they will do an awesome job leading our committees this Fall.  We had a lot of topics to cover and a lot of favors to ask of you, our leadership body.  So, we thought it would be easier to but it on our blog rather than text you bits of information.  Here is what we covered at our meeting.

1.  The summer retreat IS GOING TO HAPPEN.  However, it will most likely be one of the weekends in September (not the 19th and 20th... that is Homecoming).  We are working on reserving a cabin at the Lake of the Ozarks.  As soon as we know more details, we will post them on the blog.

2.  Our first Leadership event for the Summer will be Friday August 1st!  We will meet at 9am at Oak Park to complete some beautification projects around the school including mulching flower beds, weeding, and our perennial "Paint the Boots" project.  You will be working with your new committees, so this will be a great opportunity for you to meet and get to know the students you will be working with.  Make sure to mark your calendars and ask off work so that you can be there.  We will be finished by that afternoon.

3.  Freshman Kick Off is scheduled for Monday August 11th in the morning (Principal Maus still does not know the exact hour).  Mr. Maus has asked for all of you, the leadership class and STUCO, to assist with giving tours and serving on panels.  This is a high importance event as this is the first time we get to meet our incoming Freshmen; we want to put on a good show and let them know how excited we are that they are here!

4.  Homecoming Parade!  This year marks the 50th graduating class of Oak Park High School.  This year we will be conducting a parade before the game on Saturday afternoon.  This will be a huge endeavor, it has not been done since the 1990's, but I am sure this class will do an awesome job.  There is not a whole lot we need from you all now on this front, but what you can do about it is spread the word and get excited.  More details will follow on this front.

Thanks for reading, if you have any questions or comments, hit the reply button.  You need to have a Google account [which you should have already created by now, some of you still have not :)]

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