Caption: (from left to right) advisors Mrs. Paspalas and Mrs. Connors, Rosa SanClementi, Vivian Yetter, Jason Austin, Mason Zoccola, Sutton Rizzo, Connor Mosher, and Anthony Thaxton
By: Sutton Rizzo
Seven gifted students traveled to Honesdale last Tuesday to compete in the 2nd annual Next Level Leaders Competition. The goal of the challenge is to go around to local businesses, complete their challenges or objectives, and get graded on how you performed. The first place these students went to was the Wayne County Courthouse, where they got to talk to the Wayne County Commissioners and ask them questions about their day-to-day life. They then went to the Children’s Service Center, where they used non-verbal and verbal communication to try to solve the human knot. After, they went to the Wayne Bank, where they had to pick three items to survive on a raft.
The group next traveled to the Wayne County Historical Society, where they had to brainstorm ideas to improve the children’s zone and then toured around the building. Next was lunch, and after that they went to the Wayne County YMCA, where they had to fix a community event gone wrong and make a presentation about how to fix the problem that included angry parents, arguing employees, broken technology, and lack of food. The team then sojourned to their final destination of the day, where they went to The Known Grove, a local bookstore. There, they had to plan a community event that would help bring together people. Overall, the team ended up finishing first at the event, which was the first time they had won, and learned a lot about leadership and working together as a team.
