On April 3rd, the Sahuaro Student Council took a two-day trip to the happiest place on earth – Disneyland in Anaheim, California. This trip consisted of two days – one with a leadership workshop and the next day spent at the park, applying what we learned from the previous day to our activities.

The leadership workshop focused on how you want to lead your group and what your specific leadership style is. In one of the big activities, there were poster boards with different words to describe different leadership methods tied to separate parts of the park. You could get either Adventureland, Fantasyland, Frontierland, or Tomorrowland. This is how the activity worked: once you got to the room, you would read all the poster boards and go stand next to the one that sounded most like how you wanted to lead. Once everyone was standing next to the poster that sounded most like them, our tour guide went around the circle, reading out the posters and taking volunteers to talk about what drew them to that poster.

After that, Student Council split into groups of three or four people – all from different leadership groups – and were assigned to “Create a new experience at Disney for all who come to this happy place.” The groups had 10 minutes to complete a rough outline of a new experience at the park equipped for children and the disabled.

Following a short break in the workshop, we had leadership lanyards that were handed to people in the group who showed great leadership, and it was their responsibility to give them to other people in the group who showed leadership. As we took a tour through the park and filled out our little workbooks, people who stepped up to answer questions would get the chance to wear the lanyards. By the end of the workshop, everyone in the group had worn a lanyard.

The day after the workshop, while exploring the park, we would have random times throughout the day where we talked about the workshop and applied what we learned to how we would change the leadership of staff members in Disneyland. The workshop really opened our eyes and taught us what a good leader looks like inside and outside of our school.

Ms. Trujillo said, “I think the Disneyland trip was a great opportunity for team building amongst StuCo members. I also feel that it gave many students a chance to become closer to one another, which is an important part of having a successful student council. It was also a great reward for all of the fundraising and events we have put on throughout the school year and well deserved by everyone who attended! The class has worked so hard all year and I am glad that we had the opportunity to go on the trip this year. ”

This trip held a lot of opportunity for Sahuaro’s Student Council to grow and adapt to new ways of leading our school and making our community stronger for the upcoming years. Given how much this trip and the workshop did for us, only having to pay $200 to be at the happiest place on earth and expand our leadership here at Sahuaro wasn’t bad at all. We fundraised and worked really hard to go on this trip, and we are so grateful to have been able to have this opportunity.