Students Showcase Leadership Skills at Inaugural Competition

11/9/2018

The Masters School came home victorious from the inaugural High School Collegiate Leadership Challenge on Saturday, November 3, at the King School in Stamford, CT.

The competition focused on the completion of challenges, such as working together on a complex puzzle and recreating an image in detail using post-it notes, as well as the demonstrated leadership and collaborative skills of the competitors.

Dr. Lee Dieck, Ethical Leadership Coordinator, brought two teams of four students to the competition: the first team, which took on the name Masters Matters, was composed of students Amina Choudhry ’19, Matilda Fu ’20, Daneal Senderovich ’19 and Marlena Vogel ’20 and won the overall competition, scoring the most points for their completion of tasks and leadership skills. The second team was comprised of Sofia Benson ’20, Emma Goodman ’19, Henna Nakum ’19 and Fritz Pingel ’19.

The students who took part in the competition are either in the Ethical Leadership co-curricular or, like Pingel, are students in Dr. Dieck and Matthew Kammrath’s Ethical Leadership class. After working on projects in class that were similar to those that would be assigned at the competition, Pingel decided he wanted to participate in it. He said that even in difficult or stressful moments during the various challenges, his team members were always supportive of one another.

When asked about the skills from the Ethical Leadership class that students implemented throughout the day, Senderovich said that “being a respectful leader was really key … we have gone over that in [class] — about how to be able to make people believe in you, trust you, and want to follow you, while also not being overbearing.” And, while each student had the opportunity to be a task leader during the day, just as important was knowing how to be an effective team member.

The competition also included a feature called “Observing the Good,” where two judges noted extraordinary acts of leadership and sportsmanship. The Masters teams received the vast majority of recognitions in this area, having distinguished themselves for myriad acts of support for each other and for other teams. Emma Goodman’19 was particularly proud of these Observing the Good shout-outs: “It was great to see how the idea of a community and a culture of kindness was being implemented.”

And while Masters did walk away victorious, with the first team winning the challenge, for Goodman, the day highlighted “the commitment I had made to ethical leadership ... and seeing that [commitment] blossom.”