KIPPsters at the Student Leadership Summit in CA

It’s not every day that guests checking into a hotel get to witness a crowd of 110 cheering KIPPsters, applauding a team of teachers and students from the Arkansas Delta as they finish up roll call by forming a human pyramid. As the 2009 Student Leadership Summit kicked off at the San Francisco Clarion on October 9th, lucky passersby did just that!

Each year, the KIPP Student Leadership Summit brings a group of exemplary students together in a camplike setting for a weekend retreat. Two students from each KIPP middle school, as well as each high school, work together on activities that help develop their leadership and teamwork skills.

The Foundation has supported the Leadership Summit for six years. “Experiential learning is a key part of the curriculum for KIPP schools, including through field lessons”, says Noel Mullen, who directed the Summit in 2008 and 2009. “The Summit builds on that—it helps KIPP students across the country form bonds, while they also develop a shared sense of the importance of leadership and teamwork in education.”

For the past two years, the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has provided funding support, which was instrumental in ensuring that schools can continue to participate in this event during trying economic times.

Participants learn about leadership through a variety of activities, both mental and physical. The teacher and Foundation chaperones serve as guides and supporters by sharing personal reflections of what it means to be a leader, and helping the students identify their own leadership strengths and goals.

The larger group is broken up in teams of students from different schools; this provides a chance for more intimate connections between students that may attend a KIPP school on the other side of the country. Teacher chaperones also take this opportunity to hear and learn from each other, and many of these connections last well beyond the weekend.

On the ropes

A highlight for many students (and adults!) is the high and low ropes course. On-site facilitators “Fishtail” and “Dandelion” helped everyone work up the courage to shoot down the zip line, scale towers, and push themselves beyond their limits. “The ropes course brings out all sorts of emotion, and it’s incredible to listen to the students getting frustrated, then hear the encouragement and support from their teammates,” said one chaperone. “You get some tears, but even more positive words and laughter.”

High school KIPPsters in attendance play a special role. They serve as role models for the younger students throughout the weekend, and work together to determine how to lead the closing ceremonies. During the ceremonies, this year’s students took the sixth graders on an imaginary trip to the future so they could “meet” their future selves. This exercise in self-awareness and actualization is a truly powerful way to help prepare middle school students thinking about the next step towards college.

School Improvement Proposals

The student teams from each school have an opportunity to continue work they start during the weekend even after they return home. Each pair reflects on particular challenges their school faces, then comes up with a school improvement proposal that demonstrates ways they can be instrumental in positive school change. Each year, several proposals are awarded funding from the Foundation to help realize that student-led change. While this year’s proposals are still coming in, the winners from 2008 ranged from enacting a school honor code to keeping students motivated through an athletic team.

By all accounts, the Student Leadership Summit was a successful, life-changing event. Chaperone Francie Webb reflected on Sunday, “The hardest part of the weekend was taking the kids away from each other... On a national level, and as KIPP grows into new generations, I feel confident that all of our KIPPsters, those who attended SLS and those who didn’t, will reunite with their long-lost “ KIPP cousins”—perhaps on college campuses, in the professions of their choice, and at other defining moments in their lives.”