Junior Steven Benitez Prepares for Leadership Project

Rising Huntington High School junior Steven Benitez was recently among 21 participants in a student leadership workshop in the school library, exploring with a FranklinCovey coach, meaningful community challenges and discovering how leadership can create positive change.

“Mr. Benitez’ group focused on a project to refurbish the high school’s greenhouse in order to provide fresh and healthy produce for families in need around the community,” he said. “Providing healthy greens for people in our community will be extremely beneficial in not only feeding families but connecting people. Through our combined care and effort, we can create and nurture crops, bonds and relationships within our wildly diverse and social community.”

(While Mr. Benitez’ group explored this specific project, several other groups of students participating in the workshop chose other projects to pursue.)

The group looked at a community challenge addressing the widespread need for fresh produce. “We found through surveys in the Bluetique that many people requested fresh produce to be in stock,” Mr. Benitez said. “In order to provide them with this produce we devised a plan to refurbish the school greenhouse in order to grow the produce we needed in order to feed the families of Huntington. The investment we put in the greenhouse will last even beyond our years at the school, as the crops can and will continue to effectively feed the families, who desperately require a balanced diet, year round.”

Mr. Benitez was left believing the student leadership workshop was valuable and time well spent. “In my experience here, I have gained a new group of friends that I can comfortably communicate with and work with,” he said. “I have worked with them toward a common goal and we have engaged in conscious and active discussion around our future plans. We each relied on each other to share thoughts and put our minds together in order to contribute to our community. Through teamwork we were able to diligently handle our duties and strengthen our bond and project. We reached out to the necessary channels within our community through Mr. [Joseph] Leavy and Ms. [Sarah] Hall to begin our journey of refurbishing the greenhouse and providing healthy food options.”

Students also learned about and implemented the “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens.”

• Habit 1: Be Proactive

“We took initiative by starting a student run club in order to take the burden from the staff running the Bluetique in order to involve ourselves in the community,” Mr. Benitez said.

• Habit 2: Begin With the End in Mind

“We thoroughly planned the refurbishing of the greenhouse and planned how the finished product would look and function,” Mr. Benitez said. “We envisioned a functioning greenhouse that was able to feed those in need in our community and then took steps in order to work towards that vision.”

• Habit 3: Put First Things First

“We did the important parts of communicating our interest and passion for the project to our teachers, Ms. Hall and Mr. Leavy and took the time to gently clean up the greenhouse,” Mr. Benitez.

• Habit 4: Think Win-Win

“We entered this project with the mindset that we would feed those in need and involve ourselves in the community, benefitting both us and the people who require assistance in our community,” Mr. Benitez.

• Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood

“To start the project, we first identified a problem in our community,” Mr. Benitez said. “Then we decided to build a plan in order solve the problem that would be beneficial to all.”

• Habit 6: Synergize

“Throughout our time here we put together our minds in order to create new ideas to more efficiently solve the problem,” Mr. Benitez said.

• Habit 7: Sharpen the Saw

“We continued to stay diligent throughout our time here and worked with our goal in mind,” Mr. Benitez.

Leadership groups typically add an eighth habit and Huntington’s did just this, too.

• The 8th Habit: Find Your Voice and Inspire Others to Find Theirs

“I used my voice in order to invite others into the discussion and involved myself within the project,” Mr. Benitez said. “The group was able to engage in active conversation that provided benefit.”

“Throughout my experience here I learned that as a leader I like to encourage others and invite others to share their ideas,” Mr. Benitez said. “This experience has forced me to collaborate with my peers in a way that I am able to connect with them and be able to push them to come up with new solutions to the problems we face in our community. My communication skills have been bolstered and I am able to lead more efficiently through getting my message across. In the future I will take my experience here into mind and continue to be a role model for my peers and I will apply the seven habits.”