Student Council took a trip to a regional conference at New Oxford High School last Friday, March 2.

The conferences usually start with speeches from guest speakers, and then there are workshops, a council meeting, and finally, a closing session.

Freshman Maggie Kinna explains what the purpose of reaching out to other schools’ student councils is.

“The purpose of the trip was to get further knowledge on everyone else’s so-called problems in student council, and figure them out all together, and just to come together as one, because we like to get their views on the activities that we throw or host, and the activities other people host, and see what they’re doing,” said Kinna.

Kinna got to experience many different interesting workshops throughout the day, with topics ranging from time management as a student athlete to how to get students more involved.

Kinna felt that the conference was very helpful in educating her more about student council, so she could speak up with new ideas.

“Being with other people helped me be more extroverted, so coming back from that, I speak out more in student council, and am able to have knowledge that other people don’t have, because if they don’t go on the trip, then I have that knowledge, and some other schools tell me ‘oh we throw this activity,’ and I can bring that back to our student council, like ‘hey, maybe we should do this,’” said Kinna.

Senior Erin Kalizak and junior Grayson Daviau presented their own workshop at the conference this year.

Kalizak explains what they decided to give their presentation about.

“Grayson and I decided to present our workshop on getting the whole school involved in events, and we focused on the tailgate that we put on this year, and basically all we talked about was what are the different struggles that student councils go through when trying to get people involved in the school, and then how can you overcome those struggles,” said Kalizak. “We ended up getting a lot of good feedback, people really did enjoy our session, a lot of it was just talking in groups and bouncing ideas off of other student councils, and it kind of gave me a little bit of a motivation because I see how much our student council is able to do because of our administration, and because of our great advisors, so it was really cool to see how well we’re doing with our student council, and it was nice to help some other people get a little push to do more things and do similar things that we’ve done.”

Advisor Kellin McCullough went on the trip as well, and she participated in advisor sessions, which involved networking with other advisors.

When she wasn’t at her sessions, McCullough made sure to check in on Kalizak and Daviau.

“I popped in. They did wonderful, and they got great feedback, so I was really proud of them,” said McCullough.

Because Kalizak was presenting most of the day, she didn’t get to see any other workshops, but she did get to see the guest speakers.

“I didn’t participate in any other workshops, but we did get to hear two speakers, one spoke about social media, which was very well done, and the other spoke about his life story because he’s an NFL football player, so that was really, really neat, and then we just went to the group council session… York county has a little meeting that they do with all the councils in York county,” said Kalizak.

McCullough sees value in having student council members listen to speakers, participate in workshops, and talk to other student councils.

“I think they get to see what other councils are doing… [they] learn more, grow, network with other student council members, get new ideas to bring back to your own council… I think some get kind of a refresh and a new motivation, and then I also think it kind of gives themselves a pat on the back to say we’re doing alright. We’re doing pretty good here at Susky,” said McCullough.

Kinna is looking forward to other conferences later that will be even bigger than the district one.

“I would definitely do any conferences for student council. This was just our district one, we also go to a state one, which is more expensive, but it’s a three day one, and we get a lot more knowledge from that one, too… it’s fun. I would definitely recommend it,” said Kinna.