January 2010 Middle School Youth Forum

Today I learned:

• How to have fun and how to meet new people.
• How to do good things with people you barely know.
• That I can participate in being a leader and I can control some things.
• That I can make good decisions and follow through with them.
• That God sends us messages in many ways. 

What are these middle school students talking about?

The Blessed Savior Youth Leadership Forum!

On January 21, 47 6th grade, 7th and 8th grade students from North, South, East and West campuses of Blessed Savior School came to House of Peace to spend a day exploring wisdom.

They looked at comic strips to see what type of wisdom can be gleaned from humor and social commentary, and they looked at the Bible to see what kind of wisdom they can get from God’s Word.

All day, they talked about being leaders. This is what they had to say:

Being a good leader means:

• Putting others first.
• Stepping up and taking charge – especially when other people don’t want to.
• Standing up and presenting yourself in front of people with confidence.
• Knowing how to communicate well.
• Knowing how to talk together and make decisions
• Having people depend on me.
• Helping people do good things.
• Not being afraid of meeting new people
• Standing up for what you believe in
• Having responsibility
• Not being a liar and not being shy

They learned about the “Four G’s of Teaching,” a method for presentations. They are:

 Grab my attention

Give me something new

Get something out of me

Go make a difference

After learning the four G’s of Teaching, they used the 4 G’s to put together group wisdom presentations based on passages from the Bible. This taught them teamwork, presentation skills, and group dynamics.

They also shared some of their own wisdom… such as:

• Meeting new people can be scary at first, but if you do it, you won’t regret it.
• Being a leader can be fun, but it’s also hard work.
• To be successful, people need to work together every day in every way.
• All people have talents. Each person just has to find what those talents are.
• You can’t be afraid to meet new people because something good might come out of it.

 Each campus was invited to put together a plan for how to use their wisdom to make some important improvement for their campus or share their time, talent and treasure in a service project to benefit others in need.

Blessed Savior North will plan to start a new tutoring program for grades 1-4. The middle school students will be free after lunch, from 1:00 – 1:30, to assist students who need extra attention. Teachers will be able to request a tutoring session whenever they think one of their younger students could use some one-on-one help with homework or class assignments.

Blessed Savior West is going to raise money for Haiti. They plan to sell “dress down passes” for 50 cents each in order to collect funds for the earthquake victims in Haiti.

Blessed Savior East will collect food and clothing for The Gathering Place. They plan to advertise in their newsletter, make posters to hang around the school, and ask people to advertise in their stores, churches and businesses.

Blessed Savior South decided to build community and raise money for Haiti by having a middle school dance, inviting all four campuses. The dance will be called “Love 4 Haiti,” and it will be held on the East Campus. They will charge $1.00 and donate their proceeds to the relief efforts in Haiti.

Before the day was over, the young people were asked to talk about their day. Here are some of their comments:

Today I enjoyed:

• Thinking up ideas and helping people.
• Learning new stuff and doing stuff with new people.
• Learning how the different campuses do things differently.
• Representing our school in a well mannered way.

One thing I really like about being a leader is:

• Little kids look up to me.
• I can represent something special.
• People look up to leaders and expect them to make good choices.
• You can help others achieve goals they thought were impossible.