Students Head to Nolensville High for Leadership Conference
Published October 24, 2017
Students from each high school in the district gathered together at Nolensville High on October 20 to spend the day at the Career and Technical Education (CTE) Leadership Conference.
The conference had the theme “Building the Brand Called Me” and featured presenters not only from within WCS but outside companies as well.
“Kids listen to us, but it doesn’t sink in until they hear it from someone else,” said Independence High School architectural and engineering design teacher Steven Pickerill. “The biggest benefit is hearing that it has an application outside of the school day.”
Students could choose which sessions they wanted to attend based on what goals they had for the future.
“Basically we all chose a different session that we wanted to go to that would benefit us in the real world,” said Centennial High student Hannah Hargrove. “My next one’s going to be with autonomous vehicles, so I’m going to learn more about what I want to do in engineering.”
Students had a lot of options from which to choose. With sessions about social media, athletics, first impressions and how to start the college search, there was no shortage of information available to the students who attended the conference.
Amber MacGillis, an employee at Nissan, focused her session on the impact social media can have on someone’s job search.
“It’s really good for them to get the exposure to understand how many recruiters are actually going out, looking at those resumes and searching for that person online or checking out what their profiles say,” MacGillis said.
By choosing their own sessions, students had the opportunity to meet peers from other schools who they wouldn’t have met otherwise.
“My students in architectural and engineering design at Independence are getting to spend the day collaborating with students from Centennial or Ravenwood,” Pickerill said. “They’re all like-minded students with like interests, and they get to connect that way. They get to hear the same message from all the speakers, and they get to meet each other.”