Del Val hosted its third summer Student Leadership Summit on Aug. 14, with the involvement of students and staff.
“It was actually an idea that was not mine solely, but an idea that a couple of other assistant principals and I were speaking about at a previous school district,” Del Val Principal and organizer of the event Michael Kays said. “High schools have a lot of clubs and organizations, but they oftentimes live on islands, and they don’t really know what each other are doing. I think that it’s important that there’s an opportunity for student’s who are involved to support each other, spread the word and try to maximize the involvement.”
Kays began the group in the summer of 2023, and, over the past three years, the club has hosted a summer meeting to prepare for the upcoming year.
The day started with a breakfast where students had the opportunity to get to know each other and talk with peers.
After Kays gave a brief introduction, Math Supervisor Ryan Murphy and Social Studies and World Languages Supervisor James Kluska set up an escape room for the students.
“I enjoyed the escape room,” freshman Erin Grady said. “It was really fun. I got to know more people through that than I think I did the rest of the day, but it was a really great way to kind of warm up the rest of the day.”
The escape room had teams complete tasks among themselves and in collaboration with the whole conference. They started in the Commons to unlock another set of clues that sends them around Del Val.
In 30 minutes, the attendees completed the task, as they learned about different types of leaders and how to share responsibility.
Afterward,Del Val students attended a variety of breakout sessions led by school faculty.
To end the day, Kays went over what to look forward to in upcoming meetings.
“You don’t necessarily need to hold a title to be interested in leadership,” Kays said. “And it’s encouraging that we have so many students here that are just interested in doing the best they can to make themselves better and also to make the school work.”
