EMPORIA – The buffering video created a pocket of potentially awkward silence during Tuesday morning’s general session of the 62^nd Annual KSHSAA Student Council Leadership Workshop at Emporia State’s Memorial Union.
 
But Tim Dusin, the session leader and STUCO advisor at Satanta High School, turned it into a teaching moment for 244 student delegates from across the state.
 
“Part of leadership is figuring out what to do when things don’t always go as planned,” Dusin said.
 
The workshop’s audio and visual staff quickly remedied the technical difficulties, returning the students to a motivational moment from noted speaker and author Mark Scharenbroich. And while it wasn’t a planned pause, it highlighted a component of the leadership training program that student leaders and advisors representing 84 schools are experiencing in the weeklong workshop on the ESU campus.
 
“We purposely set them up for failure in some of the activities we do, especially early in the week, because they are all leaders,” said Rod Garman, KSHSAA assistant executive director for student council. “Learning to work with one another in their councils and not always being the leader, but sometimes being the follower and listening, is really key.
 
“We look at, ‘How do you overcome when things don’t go the way you like and have to re-think through it?’ So we do a lot of teaching on how to process.”
 

Student delegates and advisors arrived Sunday for the first of 5½ days of activities packed into agendas bookended by 7 a.m. wake-up calls and lights out during the 11 o’clock hour. In between, students and advisors hear from a variety of speakers, participate in breakout sessions and engage in activities like Indoor Olympics, Open Mic and a formal banquet.
 
After Sunday afternoon’s welcome mixer, orientation and dinner, delegates attended the first general session, highlighted by keynote speaker Ted Wiese’s message, “Learning to Lead”.
 
The workshop features a staff of 38 senior counselors with more than 250 combined years of service to student councils. It also includes a group of junior counselors – past workshop attendees who are recent graduates and served on their alma mater’s council.
 
The undergraduate delegates are made up of first-year attendees and advanced delegates who are participating for the second time.
 
“It’s a lot of just bettering your leadership skills,” said Excell Gray, a Bonner Springs senior and advanced delegate who will serve as his school council’s executive president for the upcoming year. “When we come here, we like to learn what other kids are doing at their schools around the state and then take that back to our community and better it and improve.”
 
Leadership lessons and unconventional thinking exercises come at rapid-fire pace during the workshop. On Tuesday, the hour-long general session directed by Dusin featured a video of a lone dancer in an outdoor setting, lost in his creativity. Soon, a second dancer joined him and before long, a large group was dancing without a care.
 
The message? Leadership is over-glorified. Sometimes it’s the first follower who transforms a lone wolf into a leader.
 
The session also included leadership testimonials from a trio of junior counselors and the video message from Scharenbroich, who shared how he watched a large group of students build a bottleneck at an entrance in which just one of four doors was open. After a long period of no students using the closed doors, a freshman girl opened the other three and soon the bottleneck disappeared.
 
“Listen to the voice inside your head that says, ‘Maybe I should do something,’” Scharenbroich said in his leadership lesson.
 

Dusin concluded the session with a series of mind exercises for the delegates geared toward thinking outside the box, then dispersed the students and advisors to small-group breakout sessions to discuss various leadership topics. The advanced delegates, under the direction of retired Chanute advisor Lori Kiblinger and Derby advisor Sara Wilson, brainstormed ways to facilitate the discussion for Tuesday night’s “Swap Shop,” an exchange of ideas and best practices for students to take back to their respective schools.
 
In an adjacent room, 24 student council advisors from across the state divided into three groups and received instructions for a project that incorporated leadership concepts into lyrics and a choreographed piece to a tune of their choosing.
 
“It just gets me prepared for the school year and gets me in the right mindset,” said Dodge City student council advisor Taggart Ketron, who brought six students to the workshop. “I remember the first year coming here, I was like, ‘I don’t know if I want to do this.’
 
“Now this is what I need to get prepared for the school year. It kind of gets my attitude in the right place.”
 
The workshop’s 15^th and final general session is scheduled for Friday morning. In late September and early October, KSHSAA student council regional conferences will be conducted at eight high schools across Kansas.
 
“We want the kids to take leadership skills out of this to help them become better leaders personally,” Garman said. “But also our goal this week is to get them prepared to go back to their schools, have a sense of here’s what we need to lay out for the year, here are some awesome activities we can incorporate, here’s the why. And most importantly, being the type of leaders who reach all kids in their schools.”