On Friday, October 15, LCS Co-Head students, Sarah Jiang ’22 and David Crispo ’22 hosted a National President’s Panel with student council leaders from Canadian Accredited Independent Schools (CAIS) across Canada. Our Co-Head students were motivated to design this panel to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on leadership. For two hours, they spoke with students from 17 Canadian boarding schools about the key issues facing boarding schools in the 2021/22 school year. The issues they discussed included physical and mental wellbeing, school culture, and inclusion.
We hoped to create this panel so that we could broaden our connections to one another. We realized we had no idea how some of the other boarding schools across Canada operated, or how they were doing. So, we wanted to create a community where we had more interactions with one another. Further, being a leader in these times is hard. We wanted to act as a support system for other students and inspire one another by sharing all of our experiences and upcoming initiatives.
Sarah ’22
The panel also had the opportunity to hear from LCS alumna and Olympic Sailor, Sarah Douglas ’12, who reminded students to “control what you can control.” Sarah ’12 shared about her personal achievements, how she continued to stay motivated during the pandemic, and how she dealt with feelings of uncertainty in her career (regarding the possibility of attending the Olympic Games amid COVID).
I think we came out of this experience with a fresh set of eyes where we got a glimpse into how other schools are doing. It was really cool and inspiring to hear all of these amazing young leaders share their ideas as well. David and I were nervous that this meeting wouldn’t go well but it was the opposite; it couldn’t have gone any better! It proved to both of us that if we plan and set our minds to something, we can achieve it! It was a lot of planning but it was so worth it in the end.
Sarah ’22
