More than 20 school districts sent students from second- through 12th-grades.
MINOT – Ryan Gauthier looked around and saw 300 students from all over New England, a professional motivational speaker, a congressman, and dozens of adults looking to him and his classmates for direction.
The eighth-grader from Minot Consolidated School dropped his mouth open, scratched his head, and wondered aloud, “Wow! Did we really do all of this?”
Gauthier and 15 other Minot eighth-graders learned the ultimate lesson in leadership and responsibility by planning and hosting the fourth annual New England KIDS Consortium student summit at the University of Maine – Gorham campus. Still riding high on the feelings of accomplishment, the Minot students took some time this past week to reflect on the monster task they had just completed.
“We were really starting to get nervous right before the summit,” said Ashley Ross. “What if it bombed or what if no one came?”
Jennie Dubuc had prepared a speech to introduce U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, to students, teachers and workshop presenters. She also prepared a speech in case Allen didn’t show.
“We had everything ready except for not knowing if Congressman Allen was going to come or not,” said Dubuc. “We didn’t find out until that same day.”
The eighth-graders began in September planning the event, which culminated in the two-day conference. They worked with KIDS Consortium to promote service learning as an educational model for school districts throughout New England. The model promotes student ownership, classroom curriculum, and meeting authentic community needs.
More than 20 school districts sent students from second- through 12th-grades to share their service projects and to participate in workshops, said Sara Drapeau, AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer serving KIDS Consortium in Lewiston.
“We had a real need to put on this summit,” said Drapeau. “So we thought we would get students to do it as a service learning project.”
Drapeau said the original plan was to have high school students take the job. She admitted to feeling nervous about eighth-graders handling the pressures of deadlines, making endless telephone calls, and allocating an $18,000 budget.
“Looking back, I absolutely think it was successful,” said Drapeau. “They seem to get increasingly more excited as they got more involved.”
Every detail turned out to be a lesson in problem solving and persistence, said Janice Rawson, the students’ social studies teacher and project leader. Rawson noted that none of her students had even attended a consortium summit before, nor had any group of students ever organized the event before.
“They had to start from the beginning,” said Rawson. “I don’t think they really understood what it was that they were doing until it actually happened.”
Drapeau noted that, at times, the work became tedious and discouraging, especially when the students’ phone calls weren’t returned. Students had chosen Gov. John Baldacci to serve as their key-note speaker. After several communications between the school and Blaine House, Tiffany Cadman found out that he was unavailable.
Plan B was to have motivational speaker and former college hockey player Travis Roy be their guest, said Ashley Ross. That idea took the students down another path of obstacles, which they successfully maneuvered.
“My dad came up with the idea to have Travis Roy, but we had no idea where to find him,” said Ross. “We called 411 a lot.”
“Then we had to pay him a lot of money,” said Dartanyan Bourget. “And we had to pay the band, too.”
The students arranged for a band and a dance for the participating students and adults at the Howard Johnson in Westbrook. They also had to budget for T-shirts, that they designed, and workshop presenters.
Making all of these adult decisions and giving directions at the summit made the eighth-graders feel important and confident, said Tori Hricko, who added that she was ready to put on next year’s summit, too.
“It was really cool how everyone was looking to us for what to do,” said Cadman. “We had a lot of control, and we felt really important.”
Comments are no longer available on this story