February

This semester has been eventful so far. Grace and Rachel attended the Martin Luther King Jr. Day service event through Drury, and we had a lot of fun sharing our Bailey experiences with other Drury students. Haley, Rachel, and Grace went to Bailey’s Trivia Night and met so many people that also wanted to support Bailey. They were using our stages for the silent auction, since they can’t be used in the full capacity yet. We are hoping to add stairs to our creation before spring break. 

Grace's December Post

Our group has accomplished far more than we planned to this semester by completing over half of the build for our Bailey Alternative High School Project. We have finished constructing two platforms both 8 feet by 4 feet. We still need to construct the stairs and finish off everything by painting and adding skirts to the platforms. I personally learned a lot about how to go about building platforms that are in check with the local code requirements, and about what it takes to actually put a project like this together. I also learned a lot from the students of the school on what they needed for their space. In the spring we plan to finish off the platforms as well as give the school stairs to access them. Overall we came in ahead of schedule giving us plenty of time to do the finishing details!

Sarah's December Post

As a group, our main accomplishment was completing the platforms and keeping our deadline regarding the truck. We have also set our goals for next semester as far as what we are going to do to finish up the stage and how we are going to better involve the students. As an individual, I provided easy access to a truck for transporting the platforms.

One of the major positive outcomes, besides completing the construction of the platforms, was that we have made progress on our cooperation skills as a group. We discovered that having task lists and chore rotations, for example, help a lot to prevent confusion and conflict.

Haley's December Post

The group accomplished a lot this semester. We built two stage platforms and successfully got them to the school. I was personally in charge of the budget, and I was able to keep track of all the receipts and we stayed under budget which is awesome. In the spring, we plan to paint the stage and add a skirt and whatnot and get the kids more involved with helping us.

Rachel's December Post

I think that our biggest accomplishment was staying ahead of schedule. We completed everything that we had to do this semester before Thanksgiving, and that was stressful at the time, but it is a lot less stressful now. I learned a lot about communication, and mediation. We all have our own ideas on how to do things, and I tried to be a neutral party to keep us all on task. In the spring, I think it will be easier if we set 3 days to get all of our hours done (the majority of our project is done in chunks anyway) at the beginning of the semester so that there isn’t as much stress trying to get everyone together. I really want to focus on meeting times in the spring, especially since it will be harder to get all 15 hours in one place next semester.

Moving Day Pictures

On the way to Bailey!

The Stages have ARRIVED!

They used to be in our living room.

 

Grace's Leadership Experience

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams” Eleanor Roosevelt. This has been my favorite quote since 6^th grade. What I believe is that one must be passionate about what they do if they want to achieve their goals and shape their own future. The reason I think this has a lot to do with leadership is that I believe almost every good leader must be passionate about what they do. If they are not, then how would they inspire others to follow them, or help them in attaining what it is they set out to attain? If one believes in the beauty of their dreams, visions, or goals, then that person can inspire others to believe in it as well, and help them to achieve this.

 

Leadership aside, one task that I did individually for our Summit group this semester was design the “stage” (platforms) in Google Sketch-up. We met as a group with our advisor to figure out the requirements of the platforms; however we needed a more solid version of the plan so we could work out details that might go wrong. That is why I put the design into Sketch-up. This way we could avoid a few complications. Of course, we were not able to avoid all complications, but I believe this step helped us to solidify our design so we all knew what we were building. In a situation like this, individual work is just as important as team work and leadership.