This year, I decided to be the mentor representative for 11TZH for a semester and be a part of Student Voice. This activity is the perfect chance for one to dip their toes into leadership and decision making because it mainly deals with issues at a grade-wide level.
In the few weeks that have passed since I began attending Student Voice meetings, I have learned a lot about the importance of collaboration. I would not rate collaboration as one of my problem areas as I feel like I am able and willing to work with all kinds of people with different ideas and opinions as compared to my own. However, this activity has definitely helped me develop my collaboration skills and now I can truly understand the importance of collaboration.
As a collective, any decisions made in Student Voice have to be made in collaboration with other student representatives. Often we will come across a problem that cannot be handled individually, such as a shortage of food in the cafeteria or long lunch lines. By working together and talking out potential solutions as a group, we can get a balanced and fair solution to the problems the grade faces.
Collaboration is also necessary, especially in this activity, for everyone’s ideas to be heard. It is important to remember that in a Student Voice meeting, I am not representing myself but rather everyone in my mentor group. Therefore collaboration is key in making sure that everyone’s opinions and ideas are heard and given equal value.
However, there have been some challenging aspects of collaboration, in the context of this activity. Collaboration also means that there are compromises that have to be made. This is also one of the reasons why we have not put a Chair in place. We, as a collective, have to compromise and come up with solutions together. Compromise, however, can be hard, especially if there are several different opinions, which there often are since there are about 14 mentor representatives in a meeting.
In all though, Student Voice has the role of collaboration and how prevalent it really is (and will be) in any sort of decision making/leadership role
