A high school student runs a successful campaign for student council, or she tries out and is selected as a committee head. The moment of acceptance feels great, but eventually reality sets in and she is expected to take on a leadership role. How will she know what to do? How will she have the confidence to succeed?
For Ma’ayanot student leaders—those who have been elected to serve on G.O. (Ma’ayanot’s student government organization) or who have been appointed as a head of one of Ma’ayanot’s numerous committees—the answer is Ma’ayanot’s Leadership Training Seminar, a half-day hands-on experiential workshop that took place on Wednesday, September 7, before school started.
Conceived of and created by Ms. Sarah Gordon, director of Student Activities & Experiential Education, this Leadership Training Seminar was designed with the following goals in mind:
• teaching of concrete, step-by-step instructions for how to develop and run successful student programming
• development of a shared language for giving and receiving constructive feedback
• exploration of positive strategies for successful team building
• tailoring each student’s training for her specific role or responsibility on her committee (for example, PR, social media, creative programming and others).
“Often students are thrown into leadership positions with little training or support,” says Ms. Gordon. “Our plan at Ma’ayanot is for this seminar to be the first of many similar programs throughout the year that will provide practical training for students and space for reflection on their growth as leaders.”
In addition to Ms. Gordon, the seminar was facilitated by a group of Ma’ayanot faculty members and a panel of outside experts. Mr. Marc Fein, an experiential Jewish educator, coordinator of the ATID Accelerator at PresenTense and former Regional Director of NCSY in Upstate New York, led a group session entitled, “How to Find and Use Different Strengths Within Your Team.”
During the second part of the program, student leaders chose from three sessions, based on their roles on committees.
Ms. Zisse Hanfling, a Ma’ayanot alumnae and coordinator of NCSY Summer Programs, ran a session called, “PR, Social Media and Creating the Perfect Flier,” with Mrs. Ora Schrier, Ma’ayanot’s director of Religious Programming.
Ms. Gordon led a session called “How to Run a Program 101” and Mr. Fein shared the importance lessons of learning from mistakes in “Failing Forward: How to Grow From Our Failures.”
Following a dvar Torah by Mrs. Rivka Kahan, Ma’ayanot’s principal, about how leaders respond to unanticipated challenges, students learned techniques for organizing successful events from Ms. Rachel Waldman, a community organizer, former JLIC educator at NYU and former vice president of Congregation Mt. Sinai of Washington Heights. In her session entitled “The Power of Showing Up: How to Get People to Come to Your Events,” which was very well attended, Ms. Waldman spoke about the power of the personal invitation in making a student feel welcome at an event, never turning away someone who wants to help, and the importance of always asking if you are creating an event that you personally would want to attend.
Simi Glicksman, a Ma’ayanot junior and member of the Holiday Enhancement Committee, appreciated that the seminar gave students an opportunity to live up to their potential as leaders. “We can use what we learned to give back to Ma’ayanot and to the community as a whole,” Simi said.
“It was great that Ma’ayanot provided opportunities to learn leadership skills,” added Dafna Levine, a junior and a member of the Yamim and Chessed Committees. “We learned how we can grow from failures and make the most of the opportunities we are given.”
By JLNJ Staff
