To be selected to be a part of the Student Lighthouse Team is a great honor. Students go through an application process that takes about 3 weeks. The first stage is all students have the opportunity to complete an application that consists of 3 essay questions. These questions ask students to explain a time they were a leader and how the 7 habits helped them lead, what would they like to do as a Lighthouse Team member, what leadership skills they will show, and how they will use these skills if selected to serve on the Lighthouse Team?
Once the deadline for applications has been reached, the staff who are members of one of our action teams, Culture-Shared Leadership, goes through the applications and selects the ones that had great effort and responses put into the questions. The students whose applications were selected then get a faculty/staff recommendation rubric sent to their homeroom teacher. This rubric has different categories for teachers to rate students on as well as leave comments that are important for the action team to know related to their leadership ability, responsibility, and behavior.
The Culture-Shared Leadership action team then looks at the completed faculty/staff recommendation rubrics and selects the highest-rated students that were given good feedback from their teachers to move onto the final step of the interview process which is an interview with community leaders. Each year approximately 24 students are interviewed by 3 community leaders. We had a unique situation this year where we had so many strong applicants that the action team decided to interview 27 students. Students are notified about a week in advance that they will be receiving an interview and are given information on the rubric the interviewers will be using to score them. Students go into the interview knowing they will be scored on volume and clarity of their voice, enthusiasm and confidence, body language, and relevance of their answer to the question. They are asked 4-6 questions during their interview.
Once interviews are complete, the action team looks at each student's overall scores, as well as their faculty/staff recommendation rubric, and application to get a whole picture of the child when making their final selections.
Students on this team do many different things throughout the school year. Some examples are Bullying Prevention Awareness Month activities, leading our Leader In Me Parent Education Night event (formally called Harvest the Habits, but this year we are renaming it to The Great Habit Hunt), assisting in after school math and literacy night events, service learning projects, presenting to community leaders about the impact of the 7 habits and the amazing things we have going on at ACIC, Random Acts of Kindness Week activities, school board presentations, and much more. This group stays busy and works hard doing important things for our school and community while also having fun!
The students pictured from L to R starting on the bottom row are:
4th Grade Members: Hayes Mitchell, Emberlyn Stephens, Briggs Harwood, Lilla Creek
5th Grade Members: Camila Lopez-Magana, Eimi Ramirez, Jessa Isenberg, Adleigh Sullivan, Hendryx Harris
6th Grade Members: Hannah Wheat, Maggy Hogan, Anna Spears, Adalynn Francis