Monday, October 24, 2011

Pema's Inspirational Quote

"To lead the people, walk behind them." by Lao Tzu

Shelby's Inspirational Quote

“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. “
 
Harry S. Truman
I completely agree with this quote. Truman exemplifies many points that I believe are important in leadership. Leaders must be courageous, skillful, determined and persistent. 

I also enjoy a certain quote from our friend Benjamin Franklin. Often times we find ourselves being too reluctant to share our leadership talents with others but this is necessary in expanding our leadership skills and discovering new talents. So I leave you with this fine quote.
“Hide not you talents, they for use were made. What’s a sun dial in the shade?” 
Benjamin Franklin

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Emily's Inspirational Quote

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
 - John F. Kennedy


Why this quote?
     I don't believe that you can be a leader unless you are constantly learning. A good leader also admits that they don't have all of the answers. My feelings about leadership are simple and this quote encompasses all of my opinions on the matter.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Suzy's Inspirational Quote

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” Eleanor Roosevelt
I was raised to believe that I could do anything I wanted in life, as long as I am choosing to do something with it. I love this quote of Eleanor Roosevelt because I feel like it best reflects the values I was raised upon and believe in. If I could pass on words of advice as a leader, it would be for people to follow their dreams, and only work at something they like to do. A job isn’t worth doing unless you do it right, and you won’t do it right unless you like doing it.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Pema Wangzome


After hearing about Summit Leadership Park, I knew that it was where I wanted to live my sophomore year. After getting a group of friends together and deciding what our service project would be, I was very excited. Summit seemed and seems like an experience that will do both me and the community some good. It is something that I am happy to be a part of.

Hopefully, I will gain a lot from the Young Athletes Program with the Special Olympics. I have never done anything with the Special Olympics before, so I hope to just gain experience with working with special needs children. I also hope to gain friendships with the children. I love working with children, so this will be a great experience for me. Overall, I just hope to gain a great and fun experience.

The Young Athletes Program will definitely impact my life in a good way. It will give me perspective on my own life and what special needs children lives are like. It will also impact my involvement with the Springfield community. This is only my second year in Springfield and I would like to get to know the community more. It is quite different from my home, and I enjoy getting to know new people.

Our project is with the Special Olympics. It is a program called the Young Athletes Program. So far, we’ve accomplished a lot of work. The Joplin tornado went through the Special Olympics offices in Joplin. Because of this, we’ve had a little delay in paperwork and getting in contact with our Special Olympics contact. We have finally met with her though. She gave us the paperwork that we needed and a tutorial in working with the kids. We’ve also booked the Weiser Gym for the times that we will need it. Now, all we need to work on is getting our volunteers and kids to participate. Luckily, our contact gave us the phone number of a woman we can talk to who has done this program before. As for struggles and frustrations, the Joplin tornado is about it. Because of that, we have decided to switch our program from an eight week program to a four week program this semester. 

This semester we will figure out what we are doing. Next semester we will know what we are doing and be able to have an awesome eight week program.

Emily Stebbins

When I decided to apply for Summit Leadership Park, I had many reasons for doing so. I knew that the chance to work with my friends on a service project for the community was something that I would enjoy doing. Not only am I helping the community, but I’m also getting to work with my friends to do so. It makes this project so much more enjoyable. Also, applying for Summit will look great on a resume. That isn’t my biggest reason for applying but it is a great perk. Overall, living in Summit seemed like the best choice for my sophomore year. 

I hope to gain a lot from the Summit Leadership Park experience. Since our Summit Group is working with the Special Olympics, I hope to gain skills in working with special needs children. Since I am an education major, I will need to know how to work with all types of students. In my classes, I might have a student that I will be able to work with because of the skills I gain during this experience. I also hope to gain skills in organization. I’ve organized events in high school, but the Young Athletes Program with the Special Olympics is closer to the types of events I might need to organize as a teacher. Lastly, I hope I gain friendships with the children we are working with. I love kids and this will be a great experience simply because I’ll be able to get to know some really great kids. 

This project will impact my life in a lot of positive ways. I’ll learn how to work with special needs students which will impact how I teach in a few years. It might also help me get a job after I graduate. Plus, I’ll get to know these kids and hear their stories. It might give me some perspective on my own life and struggles.

Our project is the Young Athletes Program with the Special Olympics in Springfield. So far, we’ve gotten quite a lot of the groundwork accomplished. Since the Joplin tornado tore out the Special Olympics offices, we weren’t able to get paperwork and meet with our contact as soon as we wanted to. We finally were able to meet with our contact, and we got all that we needed to get. We have volunteer paperwork and a tutorial in how to train the kids in the basic exercises to prepare them for the Special Olympics. We’ve booked the Weiser Gym for the four nights that we will need it this semester as well. Our contact has the equipment that we will need. What we need to do now is find a few more volunteers and contact the local schools to find twelve to fifteen kids to be a part of the program. And, our contact gave us the phone number of a woman who has successfully ran multiple Young Athlete Programs before. The only struggles and frustrations we had were the complications from the Joplin tornado. The reason we’ve decided to have a four week program this semester instead of an eight week program was due to time constraints. But, we will gain a lot of experience this semester so that our eight week program next semester will be no big deal at all.

Shelby Hoover


Summit Leadership Park had many appealing qualities to me. I saw and still see Summit Leadership Park as being a great experience and a great way to get involved. I knew that being part of a community service project with a group my close friends would be a great experience, that we would have an enjoyable time and that we would make an impact on the community. There are so many wonderful perks with being involved in the Summit Leadership Park and I am extremely excited for the upcoming year. Overall, I believe that Summit Park was the best choice for my sophomore year.

Through Summit Leadership Park I hope to gain a lot. Our Summit Group has chosen to work with the Special Olympics and are organizing, planning and instructing a Young Athletes Program. This requires a lot of hard work but the reward is far greater.  As an Education Major, this will be a great way to gain experience in working with children who have different learning types and styles. There is a high possibility that I will have students in my classroom similar to those that I am helping with this program. Next, I hope to gain experience in organizing and planning. I have never planned a project or program as large as this. Through this project, I will be working with people who have experience in planning and organizing such events and will gain insight from these people and from my personal experience throughout the year. Lastly, I also love being around kids and helping them learn and grow. I am hoping to gain great relationships with the kids I will be meeting and helping and am excited to see them learn, grow and have fun.

This experience will have a great impact on my life. With this project, I will gain insight and knowledge in working with children with special needs. This alone will have a huge impact on my future career and give me different viewpoints on my own life and my own strength and weaknesses.

Our project for Summit Leadership Park is with the Special Olympics where we will be doing a Young Athletes Program. This program is designed for kids ages three to seven to give them a chance to get involved in different sports before they enter the Special Olympics at the age of eight. So far, we have accomplished a lot in the planning of the program. We had a slight set back because of the Joplin tornado but we are now underway with the project. This has also been our only major struggle that we have had this far. We were able to meet with our Community Correspondent a few days ago and discussed many elements of our program. We now have volunteer forms and paperwork and complete lesson plans for our weekly program. We also decided that the first program that we will be doing would be a four-week program, which helps us fit everything into the busy fall schedule. We have booked the Weiser Gym for four weeks on Thursday nights for about an hour and a half. We also received some contacts for individuals that have experience in running the Young Athletes Program and contacts for places where can give us ideas of children that would be interested. All we need to accomplish now is contacting schools and daycares for children that would be interested and finding volunteers. So be on the look out for that!
Overall, it is going to be a great year and I am very excited!

Guess what…It’s Fall!!! So do you know what that means??? It’s Special Olympics Time!!!!

First off I would like to start by saying how excited we all are to be kicking this project off! Along with the typical activities in fall, like jumping in a pile of leaves, drinking apple cider, and decorating for Halloween, we have been anxiously awaiting the start of our Special Olympics Little Athletes Program!
I personally wanted to live in Summit Park because it was an opportunity to get one of the programs that I care about started on campus that Drury did not already have started. I volunteered for the Special Olympics Program all four years of high school. My high school program was where special needs kids from all over the Parkway School District would come and play basketball. All the clubs in my school had an opportunity to set up an activity table for the kids when they weren’t playing basketball. While volunteering my freshman year I had a mother come up to our table with her son, she couldn’t stop saying how thankful she was for us being there. Making them happy made me feel better, so I continued to volunteer every year. So, when I heard from my friends about a chance to make our own community service project on campus I offered up this idea.
            I have always been the volunteer rather than the organizer of projects, so I hope to gain some experience as one of the leaders of Special Olympics. It’ll be interesting to be someone calling the shots instead of being told how to help. I also hope that we have the chance to really get to know these amazing kids, and that they get to know us throughout the year.
            One of the main problems that we ran into when trying to get started was getting the information we needed from the Special Olympics coordinator. Her office had been completely destroyed in the Joplin tornado, so all summer she was trying to get her new office set up in Springfield. Needless to say, it was difficult for her to meet up with us, but we now have everything we need to get this party started!
            Our plan is to start a Special Olympics Little Athletes program here on Drurys campus. Basically, we will start this semester by having a four week program of teaching the fundamentals of sports to kids from the ages of 3-7. We will soon be contacting local schools and daycares around the area to see who would be interested in getting involved. We also have the necessary paperwork for our volunteers, so we will be trying to recruit some volunteers as well.
I’ve always loved any chance to volunteer, and I know that we are all going to have a great year working with these wonderful children.
                        -Suzy B.