Summit Meetings

We had many summit meetings over the past few months. There were some that I couldn't make due to other personal commitments, but overall I had an understand of what was going to happen at the summit.
We planned many things to who was going to be there, how many people were going, who was going to be catering for the day to how we could make the whole meeting environmentally sustainable.

Leanne was a really big help. Her and Lynn had good ideas and what was really good was that they really took the students ideas to heart and actually listened to us. I know that sometimes our voice gets lost with all the other people who are more important or older or have better ranking or whatnot.

The meetings overall went really well. We met at the VSB a few times and discussed what was going to happen and what was going on right now. I think that they really took the whole idea of students leading the summit and making it come true.
Throughout the meetings, we met many people from the school board and the different teachers/principals/vice principals who were all going to be apart of the summit.
In the beginning the group was a fairly big, but towards the end, there were few board staff and more students showing up to the meetings. It was really interesting and everyone equally had shown interest and really took it seriously.

It was really fun to go to the meetings, especially at Byng or the School Board because we all piled into Mr. Howe's car and sometimes Jess' car to go to meetings. I also had a sense of accomplishment because I, along with the other students, was carrying on something that needed to be done and that was really important. Environmental sustainability is something that is now talked about a lot more. I actually notice the commercials on TV about sustainability and after taking part in this whole thing, I'm shocked how I haven't really payed attention about it.

Now I'm really keen about getitng teachers to turn off lights or open their blinds/windows to save energy. Also, I recycle a lot of things that people will easily throw in the garbage. During the sustainability meetings, I learned that reducing and reusing was a lot more important as well as recycling. I was aware of the three R's but it just came to me that I wasn't reducing or reusing as much as I was recycling. I thought that recycling was the most important out of the three but I realized that they were all equally important. I think that other people are like me as well and think that if you recycle, it's really helping the environment. It's wrong, because well recycling does help, but you need to concentrate on the other things as well.

The topic kind of got swept away, but after the meetings, we had a final meeting with all the facilitators. I was shocked to see about 20 student facilitators at the meeting. I wasn't even aware of how many students were involved in the summit because not all of them came to the meetings. There were a couple of people who came once or twice, and then there were the regular members who included the students from King George and the girls from Byng.

I thought that the meeting had a really good turn out and it was pretty fun when Leanne picked names out to see which topic we would be facilitating. It was funny to see some people who were fighting over topics they wanted to do. Luckily, I got my first choice which was Food & Composting. I thought this was the topic I wanted to do because I already work in the kitchen with Chef and it was something that appealed to me.

The meetings were really good and after the last meeting, the facilitators meeting, it was hard to believe that after the weekend it was finally the summit!
I felt really good about finally getting able to tell my ideas to other students and staff members, as well as because we've been working on it for so long, it was like a huge weight was going to be lifted off my shoulders. I was also pretty nervous because many of us thought that we would be put in partners and facilitate, but we ended up doing it by ourselves.
I was nervous because I didn't want to have those awkward silences and not know what to say. Also, I was hoping that people in the groups would be a lot more talkative than me, so I could just say some stuff here and there, but not really take over.

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