Leadership in action put on the Leadership Summit which occurred on April 30, 2025 in the Upper Campus’ auditorium.
This year was the third year occurrence of the Leadership Summit. It’s an opportunity for the senior leaders to make an impact on underclassmen by explaining a leadership topic and applying it to a high school student’s point of view.
“We have to get together in a group and then pick a topic that we learn over the year,” senior Samantha Andresen says. “Then we present it to all the students in the school at the end of the year.”
Leadership contains many goals, one being where they want MCHS to be a school where students help others.
“The main goal is that we want to be a school where students help students,” Social Science Division Chair Sean Sterner says. “What we see take place in the Leadership Summit provides opportunities for senior leaders to teach their fellow classmates.”
The senior leaders hoped to get alumni to come back and reminisce what impact they left as well as this graduating class of 2025.
Senior Miah Kucinski says, “I think it’s a really big presentation for us and especially because we want to try and get alumni to come back and give their perspective on what we have become now.”
Sterner had attended an event like this before. Being the reason why the Leadership Summit emerged at MCHS.
“I had attended an event called the ‘Global Leadership Summit’ which takes place here in Illinois and when I was watching,” Sterner says. “I thought, why don’t our students here at McHenry do something similar?”
The groups came up with different ideas and some with repeating lessons learned in the past.
“I like getting to see every group create their own activities as well as reflecting back to some things we first learned as a leader,” Kucinski says, “like pride camp.”
Having leaders at our school helps the underclassmen to use their voice and believe that they can be part of a change that MCHS would like to see.
“When we have strong student leaders, our school excels,” Sterner says. “That’s something we can work on as our inner school and something we can grow on. But, we truly believe that students can make a difference, and that students should have a voice.”