The Garden City Telegram
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Making the right choices
Published 3/28/2008 in News : Education
By EMILY BEHLMANN
ebehlmann@gctelegram.com
All those educators and motivational speakers used to tell Trent Wilke of Wichita County High School about the dangers of drinking, the importance of making the "right choices."
For a while, he used to blow them off, he told a group of area middle school students Thursday afternoon.
"Then I realized, 'It actually does apply to me,'" he said.
He and other high-school-age leaders at Thursday's Student Universal leadership conference said they hope conference participants, too, can see a connection between their own lives and the lessons they learned at Garden City Community College on Thursday -- if not now, then in the future.
Student Universal, conducted by the Sublette-based Southwest Plains Regional Service Center, is a leadership conference for western Kansas middle school and high school students. More than 300 students from across the region attended break-out sessions and listened to keynote speaker and singer/songwriter Monte Selby.
Thursday's event was centered on making positive choices, said Joe Coles, the center's student services coordinator, as he turned around to reveal the slogan on the back of conference T-shirts: "Positive anything is better than negative nothing."
Although the service center staff facilitated the event, Coles said much of it was organized by a group of leaders that acts as an advisory group. Each of about 40 member school districts can send a student leader to serve on the council.
The idea of the leadership conference came from the student group four years ago, and now the group determines topics for break-out sessions and conducts many of them, Coles said.
Topics for middle school students included time management, team building, respect, positive habits, Internet safety and the Nintendo game Guitar Hero.
High schoolers discussed positive thinking, making students feel connected to a school, community service, student health issues and college life.
Cimarron High School student Ellen Blattner, who helped facilitate the middle school team-building workshop, said she thinks the event provided important lessons.
"Leadership plays a big role in people's lives," she said.
Jared Keltner, an eighth-grader from Wichita County Junior High School, said he gained something from the experience. It was an opportunity to meet people from other schools, and to learn a little bit, he said.
One lesson was that "if you stick up for other people, more people will stick up for you," Keltner said.
That was a message from Selby, who wove songs and anecdotes in with motivational messages.
According to Coles, Selby is a former teacher and principal who also serves as an associate professor of school leadership in Emporia State University's College of Education. He speaks and performs across the country.
Likening life to basketball, Selby encouraged students to "work with your head up," paying attention to who might be open on the court or who might need help in class or at work.
"If you live in a town where you help everybody get better, it's gonna be a place where you want to live," he said.
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