Leadership is the elected student council members at Vallivue High School, and they handle many different activities around the school. They work very hard each year to bring fun and culture to the student body.
Leadership, sometimes known as “ASB,” is advised by Mrs. Hammons. She finds the experience of overseeing the Leadership program to be a learning experience and a stressful task, and says she enjoys working with the leadership kids. There are four student-elected officers for each class year, Freshman-Senior. In addition to that, there are four ASB officers that are seniors.
Their biggest goal is to be as diverse as possible, inviting students from several different backgrounds and opinions amidst areas of the school. Right now, three of those backgrounds include theater, band, and sports. Leadership constantly seeks to improve and better the Vallivue community.
Throughout the year, the Leadership class runs events and activities for the student body. They run the entire Homecoming Week, including the dance, Spirit Week Dress up days, the dodgeball tournament, and the carnival. The leadership group wants to bring back the Vallivue Blood Drive, which they ran for several years before it decreased in popularity and was dropped by the leadership team for other, more popular events. The final large event that leadership runs is senior prom.
Cameron Schnee is a senior and this year’s ASB President. He joined leadership with the thought of “why not?” Then, it became something he loved. He finds it to be a fun way to improve Vallivue and have a place where he could come up with ideas and have an important role when it came to the changes made to his school. One of his favorite memories from being in Leadership was during his sophomore year: “During the winter of my sophomore year when the school got shut down due to a threat. While that sucked, the day was so fun because a bunch of the leadership students were at Walmart at that moment to go shopping for items to donate. We then went and got food, played basketball, and then went thrifting together, which was all very fun.”
Schnee also states that Hammons and even many of the other staff have become great friends because of experiences like these.
While Schnee does enjoy leadership, there are things he would like to improve. One of those things is to add more events to leadership, wanting to follow in other schools footsteps of having more positions to get more students involved. This would benefit the school by allowing the class to get more things done, bring more spirit to the group, and gather more, potentially better changes to Vallivue. When asked what he would want to add, he mentioned that while many things have been discussed, many have failed due to planning or time differences. Several of these events he mentioned included a Caldwell vs Vallivue powderpuff game and The Battle of The Vues, which would have attempted or created a chance to spark long-lasting rivalry traditions.
Finally, when asked what his favorite part of leadership was, Schnee said that it would have to be the people. He describes Mrs. Hammons as “an amazing teacher and mentor” and states that the other students, the activities he gets to be a part of, and the people he gets to meet, are so fun.
Leadership is a diverse, involved group of students always looking to improve the Vallivue community with the help of any students or staff members willing to join. Mrs. Hammons encouraged students to push out of their comfort zones and run for student council and experience the wide range of opportunities and people that go into making Vallivue better every day.