High School Students Have Vision

This isn’t up to date news, but I thought worthy of a recap, albeit two weeks late.

I was invited to a gathering of 100+ high school students at Southeastern University on September 16. Who could orchestrate such an event? (Let me tell you the logistics I am sure were fun with all the cuts in transportation and field trip funding!) The answer would be Lakeland Vision. Hopefully at this point you are not wondering what Lakeland Vision is, but if you are check out Chuck’s earlier post.

Who?

Students from the public high schools, including McKeel and the IB school in Bartow, Life Skills, and multiple private schools sent anywhere from 5-10 representatives to the visioning meeting. Most of the students appeared to be Juniors or Seniors but occasionally I would run into a Freshman or Sophomore.

What and Why?

Lakeland Vision held public meetings throughout the month of September and thought it imperitive to include the upcoming generation. Makes sense because all of this visioning is meant ultimately for…the next generation. It certainly is beneficial to see what they really want. The students were not the only ones involved in the structured visioning sessions though the chaperones too formed their own subgroup.

How?

Students were divided into ten groups of approximately ten members each. For the most part there was very little overlap of students from the same school. A trained student from Southeastern University then led the group through a guided discussion. (pictured above) The session would eventually produce a list of the top three suggestions the group had for the future of Lakeland. At the end of the time each group presented their ideas.

Ideas.

There were a few reoccurring themes throughout the event. Most groups felt there needed to be wanted safe places after school for students to hang out. The majority of the groups mentioned environmental concerns from expanding the public transportation to requiring recycling to offering an environmental issues elective in the high school curriculum. One group wanted more availability for student involvement in the local government. Others mentioned having less development and more beautification projects, such as painting murals of the lakes around town.

Feedback

I was impressed by the students. They were articulate, alert and wanted to be heard. When I perused from group to group the number one highlight of the day was interacting with students from other schools. They really enjoyed making connections with one another and wanted the opportunity for this to continue. It also meant a lot that their voice was being heard and their ideas counted. One young lady said it helped her understand the process of how decisions are made. Of course getting out of school wasn’t too bad either!

photo credit: Tom Hagerty