While the De Soto High School Student Council normally works to better our school, they also work to better themselves. On Sept. 9, StuCo members traveled to Timber Ridge Adventure Center for a field trip.
“StuCo was divided into three different groups with all different classes and we did a lot of team building exercises,” said junior student council member Gabby Mallozzi.
Team building exercises include rock walls, rope courses, and much more.
“We did the typical trust fall a lot. There’s this one wall that we did that we had to work together on. It was really physical and I wasn’t expecting something like that,” said junior student council member Becca Clancy.
The field trip was meant to unite all four grades represented in StuCo as one.
“I didn’t know some of the people in my group. There was a freshman in my group, and I didn’t know him [very well before]. So, getting to know them more [helped],” Clancy said. “From the beginning we got yelled at for ‘voluntelling’ [telling someone they should do something] people. Sometimes in StuCo it’s like, freshmen listen to what we say. It opened our eyes to talking more.”
In going to Timber Ridge, they StuCo members “learned to trust [each other] more,” said junior student council member Taylor Ramseyer.
Mallozzi agreed, saying that the activities helped them learn how to communicate with each other better.
“I feel like it improved our communication a lot through all the team building. Every activity you have to rely on other people so then you got close to people you didn’t know before,” Mallozzi said.
The upperclassmen claimed they learned how to collaborate and include the underclassmen more in decision making.
“I think it will help us be more open to other people’s ideas that we might not have listened to before just because they were underclassmen and they hadn’t done StuCo before. Getting to know everyone, I feel like strengthened our friendships and now we trust each other and our opinions,” Mallozzi said.
Overall, the members of Student Council considered it a successful day and thought it would help the way they ‘run’ DHS.
“We’ve learned to work together as a team and trust each other as a whole. It definitely changed how the student council works together,” Ramseyer said.