Westwood students tackle leadership retreat at NMU
MARQUETTE — It was all about leadership at NMU Friday as students from Westwood High School engaged in a leadership retreat.
The theme of this year’s retreat was Piecing Together Leadership and was designed around the idea that each person is a piece of the puzzle, coming together to make things work. The Westwood students participated in activities that displayed the kind of leader they each were, and others that put their skills to the test.
“We’re taking them through things that challenge them to see how well they know their classmates and how well they put in effort to get to know other people,” NMU sophomore Tiffani Haught said. “We also take them through things, like problem solving skills, where we present them with a challenge and maybe we purposefully make it so that everything doesn’t go the right way and we present them with, ‘how are you going to handle that if that happens in a real situation?'”
“It pretty much helps them see how to work with each other, and when you’re not getting your opinion heard because a lot of people are going to say, ‘Well, I think we should put this here,’ and some people are going to disagree so it’s going to create a little uproar between the students,” NMU junior Andre Stringer said.
The big takeaway from today’s retreat is that everyone brings something to the table and it’s important to listen to what each person has to say.
“Everybody can be a leader,” Westwood High School senior Emily Carlson said. “There are so many different styles and types of leaders and they’re all good. There’s no bad type of leader.”
The retreat was designed by NMU students in the Student Leader Fellowship Program as part of a theory and practice course.