Discover CommUnity a chance for students to share best practices
About 270 Grade 7-12 students from across Palliser Regional Schools will come together next week to Discover CommUnity, a conference aimed at sharing, celebrating and encouraging student leaders.
Discover CommUnity is a follow-up to Discover U, a student-led conference held in Lethbridge in November, organized by Palliser students for their peers. That conference included time for school teams to begin planning their leadership work for the year.
This spring event will be held at Trinity Christian School in Calgary, Thursday, May 4. Students have to preregister at their school. The event is free to participants. Busing from outside Calgary is provided as is lunch for all.
Everything from the nine breakout sessions to the team-building activities are being organized by high school students on Palliser’s “Blue Team,” a nickname for a core group of student leaders from across the division.
Director of Learning Jason Kupery says members of the Blue Team will be using breakout sessions to share some of their success stories from this past year – whether they involve creating student mentorship teams or organizing drives to support community needs. They won’t just be tooting their own horns. They’ll be sharing key takeaways of what worked well at their school and what might work well at others, Kupery says.
“There’s so much diversity in Palliser and one of the benefits of that is we can learn so much from each other,” he says.
This event will feature a keynote address by pentathlete Joshua Riker-Fox, a member of the 2008 Canadian Olympic Team in Beijing. Pentathletes compete in five sports – fencing, swimming, equestrian riding, and a combined run and shoot. Riker-Fox, a Calgarian, won bronze in the 2015 World Cup and the 2007 Pan American Games. It’s expected his keynote address will focus on diversity.