We have been very busy in the Student Council, working on 4 projects simultaneously. We have started creating our student engagement survey, planning our HS Assembly, planning our HS leadership meetings and beginning to work on mental health issues that our HS community face. Upon working on the student engagement survey, there were many things I learned about the ethical concerns that need to be considered before posting something like a feedback survey on a platform where all HS Students. One of these concerns was the idea that students may send us very personal information that requires immediate action (serious mental health issues), in the event that we do receive such responses, who will be responsible for checking the claims? Who will be responsible for making sure we get back to the individual in time? Another concern we had with the form was the question that we had made ‘What teacher/student may be involved in your concern?’ We also realised this could cause several problems where individuals sent us particular names of students anonymously, it would be very hard for us, as fellow students to take action to solve these issues, given that we are unable to disclose the name of the individual that submitted the form to anyone outside of the HS Student Council. Considering these aspects has allowed me to become more principled and consider the consequences of my actions before acting.
Another thing I realised was that when we work in groups together, we are more efficient and effective than one or two individuals taking on the majority of the workload. I have to say that personally at the beginning of the year, Anthony and I ended up taking on the majority of the workload and we weren’t very good at delegating tasks to others. However, as the year went on and particularly in this season, I understood the importance of sharing the workload and splitting the entire council into different groups to be more effective. As a result, I think that we were able to accomplish more in the last month than we would usually be able to, we were able to complete our student feedback form, create a spirit week, engage Student Voice’s in mental health discussions, start our new DEI project and even plan for our assembly. All of this would not have been possible if we didn’t have everyone on board and collaborating with each other.