Rachel in the Lower 6 writes about the recent Leadership Day.
Valentine’s day for the Lower Sixth this year was perhaps not much of a romantic occasion, instead, the year group took part in a packed day full of exciting and undoubtedly challenging activities for Leadership Day.
Confidence, teamwork, resilience, good humour and a positive outlook are all key attributes required for leadership. Throughout the day, we explored these various themes, learning about ways to improve our leadership skills and identify our own strengths and weaknesses.
We began the day with a delicious breakfast, giving us a short while to build up our strength for the day ahead. The room was buzzing with excitement with forms laughing and chatting between bites of eggs and hash browns.
The talk which followed, by old girl Hannah Penn, gave us an immensely inspirational and practically useful start to the themes of leadership and strength of character. Hannah talked us through her ‘14 in 14’ pieces of advice about ways to be not only a great leader, but an overall compassionate, accomplished and rounded person. Her messages on the importance of utilising failure for future success and the value of relationships of all kinds, really resonated with us, giving us the opportunity to reflect on ways we can all as individuals work on ourselves positively, whether it be to try and fail more often, or to embrace changes and challenges which throw us out of our comfort zone.
This kind of motivation and inspiration proved greatly necessary when we were all faced with the next challenge of the day. Military style training activities of a wide range really highlighted the physical strengths of lots of girls. The sense of joyful teamwork and good humour flooded the sports hall, as girls cheered one another on whilst running, jumping, throwing and lifting.
The afternoon brought a very different, but equally testing and enjoyable activity. Stand up comedy proved to be extremely funny. Amidst all the good fun and laughs, we each faced the nerves of standing up confidently, recalling funny anecdotes and delivering cringey punch lines with the aim of giving a short stand-up show to a group of our peers. Everyone excelled, with excellent jokes and superb delivery, creating a lovely atmosphere in the group.
From giggles to breathlessness, the day brought a huge amount of fun and immersive learning for everyone. The qualities of teamwork and resilience in the sporting activities, as well as confidence and good humour in the stand-up comedy, proved invaluable in stretching each and every one of us to improve these skills and in doing so, learn to continue to exercise the abilities needed for strong, successful leadership. As well as this, the day was a jolly way to end the half term and have some great bonding time with all the year.
