During a recent three-day Community Impact Symposium in Washington DC, four Oak Knoll High School students gathered with students from across the country to share ideas on how they could make more positive and systemic changes in their school and local communities.

The goal was to work in teams to identify various approaches taken to local, state, and national levels and work with their schoolmates to draft a vision statement and action strategy to take back home to Oak Knoll.

"No matter what field you're in–whether you're a scientist, a philosopher, or a linguist–whoever tells the best story is going to win. When I'm competing with all the other people, if I can make my case more clearly, and more persuasively, and actually more entertaining than anybody else, then I'm going to win that argument," says Lisa Levchuck, Upper School English Teacher at Oak Knoll.  She is extolling the importance of writing skills and a skilled writer's power to persuade. 

In this episode of The Happy Kids Project we learn about The Writing Center at Oak Knoll–a truly distinctive peer to peer service in the Upper School. Oak Knoll's Writing Center provides a unique opportunity for middle and high school students to take on leadership roles while supporting their peers. Hear how the Writing Center increases student confidence, leadership skills, and academic excellence in a safe and supportive space.

There are a variety of strategies a single-sex school can employ to capitalize on an all-girls environment and provide an array of opportunities for students to grow in confidence and hone their leadership skills. Running for office on a student-council may seem an obvious choice, but not all students have that comfort level. Oak Knoll deploys the following strategies to ensure that all students can explore leadership (whether with a lower case “l” or an upper case “L”) throughout their Middle and Upper School years.