Savanna Byles, Emilia Haus

Students streamed into Miami Palmetto Senior High’s auditorium after school on Sept.13 for Club Leadership Day, where club boards gathered to prepare their clubs for the school year. Hosted by Activities Director Elizabeth Valero and Vice President of Student Council, senior Catherine Green, Club Leadership Day offers opportunities and direction for incoming club boards to understand their positions, and club’s needs.

Being part of a leadership team can be exciting, providing students a chance to create welcoming environments for new and old club members. However, it can also be daunting, hence Club Leadership Day. 

“Leadership day is something that’s supposed to bring together all the club boards, all the class boards and a couple people from the Student Council board…it’s just a bringing together to really understand the type of position you hold. It’s something that you were chosen to do…that needs to be emphasized because the importance of that position, you’re holding that responsibility…So we hold this day to emphasize that [we] make sure people…understand and know what they’re doing and do it carefully and responsibly,” Green said.

The after-school event started with an introduction by Valero and Green on social media and advertising, relaying information to students on changes to the current advertising parameters:flyers must have activity stamps visible, locations students can post flyers and methods of advertisement such as through MPSH’s Television Production and the official MPSH Activities Instagram account.

Before going into club fair activities, club treasurers took part in a workshop with Treasurer Anne Marie Skjong-Nilsen to learn about the requirements for their specific position. For the remainder of  members, Green went into detail relating to club fair, and the responsibilities of clubs to get students to join their clubs through creativity and clear advertisement.

Following this, Green and Valero discussed basic principles and rules for clubs, including assigned Inter-Club Council Members and ICC meetings, networking, google accounts and online monthly reports — all necessary parts to a club’s functionality. Furthermore, information on club constitutions included the necessity for club voting, including the addition of MPSH’s new Academic Integrity Policy this year, and a club’s choice to add this new policy to their club constitutions.

Lighter announcements, like Homecoming themes and MPSH’s 2023 Community Haunted House also featured Sara Kramer and Cassandra Pita, Co-Chairs of the Student Council Environmental Outreach Senate Committee, advancing their initiatives for distributing palm oil-free candy to protect habitats for jungle animals such as Orangutans.

Lastly, Valero discussed matters of marketing towards clubs, by teaching club board members the four P’s of marketing — product, price, promotion and placement. She demonstrated how clubs could use these marketing tips to their advantage to build a brand.

“The leadership seminar was really interesting, I especially liked learning about the marketing aspects and specifically curating a brand image; I thought it was really interesting how she talked about how, not only using social media, but also using it to create a specific image for yourself and sort of build a reputation about your club to present your values and what you’d like to achieve. I thought that was really interesting, and something I’d like to incorporate into my club and other clubs in the future,” senior and President of Creative Writing Club Nicole Gonglewski said.

For club leaders like Gonglewski, Club Leadership Day helped her put together plans for her club to expand it in unique ways that can both place the club on the market, and allow for further student interaction, based on the techniques taught by Valero.

“For my club specifically, Creative Writing club has a few different ideas in the works, for different meeting types, and having additional meetings; maybe separate for separate group projects, or even peer editing. We also plan to expand our literary magazine…the Golden Sun magazine, which we started last year, and will be doing this year. So we plan to continue and focus even more on that and involve as many students as possible…Even though we are a relatively small club, we’d like to get our membership up…The leadership seminar told us a lot about building a brand, and I think if we continue to build our brand…and show our values, I think we can work on that,” Gonglewski said.

Similarly, students who hold leadership positions in various clubs — such as President of Women of Tomorrow, Vice President of Creative Writing Club, Debate, African Heritage and Italian Honor Society, as well as Treasurer of Philosophy Club — Condoleezza Alexis, found Club Leadership Day useful in getting her many clubs involved with the student body at MPSH.

“I definitely plan to expand a lot of my clubs this year. Especially Debate, Creative Writing, African Heritage, and Philosophy club…Especially in terms of social media, outreach and getting involved in school. I really [want] to emphasize how much the mini-marketing speech helped,” Alexis said.

Furthermore, Green hopes that club leadership day provides an opportunity for club boards to feel more comfortable in their teams and their ability to run their club in a way that brings people together.

“We’ve already been in school…but at the same time, some people are figuring out club leadership and getting settled in, and we want to make sure everyone knows that you have people to fall back on. You have your board to fall back on; you’re not doing this alone. And that’s what your board’s there for, you have a team,” Green said.

Green notes her excitement for what is to come of this year’s club leadership, and all the future opportunities awaiting this new club direction for the 2023-2024 school year.

“I think I’m most excited for…seeing everyone’s perspective on what they think their responsibility is and how…new ideas that can come from them about what they wanted for their club that we can incorporate to just the whole student body in general, which is what I’m here to do… bouncing ideas off people who have the same mindset. It [is] something I really enjoy. I think it helps cultivate different things and makes people feel more welcome to do it,” Green said.