State Officers at 2009 Middle Level Conference

All you high school students out there... did you know that the middle school also has a state conference? It's true! Each year a middle school student council coordinates the event in conjunction to the state project for the year. It is held at the Doubletree hotel in Austin, TX and includes speakers, swap shop sessions, and a social. While the high school annual conference had over 4,000 students in attendence last year, the middle school conference had a few hundred and was a more intimate experience for all. The state officers were fortunate enough to be able to emcee at the event and meet many awesome middle school students.

I know when I was in middle school student council, I didn't know TASC even existed, so I think all the student councils who came deserve a lot of credit. These students show a lot of enthusiasm for TASC and are ready to do great things for their state and community.

If you would like to get involved at the middle school state next year, check out more information on the TASC website.

TASC Districts

Have you always wondered exactly what district you are in?
The numbers above correspond to the various districts throughout Texas. At our state conference, you will hear all the districts announced --- now you will know which one you are in. Your district also has a president who resides over it. Be sure to check out the TASC website and find out who is in charge of your district!

The top ten projects of 2009

Do you need some awesome project ideas for this year?
Well here are the top ten projects for 2009....

1. Got Your Back... Pack
Backpacks are filled with non-perishable individually wrapped food items for homeless students so they can have food available to them on the weekends. The backpacks are made of canvas and not see through or mesh in order to protect the privacy of the students. The backpacks also contain instructions to return empty backpacks on Monday for reuse and prepare for redistribution the following Friday.

2. Independence Weekend: A Tribute to Severely Injured Soldiers
The purpose of this weekend is to honor soldiers who have been severely injured in the current wars. Multiple events were conducted to honor veterans and to raise donations for the Independence Fund, a non-profit organization that provides veterans with tools, therapies and guidance. More than $36,000 was raised.

3. Cooper High School for A.L.L. – A Chance to Believe
This 2A high school student council worked to raise awareness in their community of childhood cancer and to raise money to support a local child diagnosed with leukemia.

4. Cy-Fair High School in Cypress for Jerry Brown Appreciation Day
The Cy- Fair student council created a day to honor an exceptional custodian on their campus. This was a surprise event that the student council worked for weeks to organize. The party included gifts, a birthday cake, a scrapbook and letters.

5. Denton High School for Homecoming Carnival
To promote school pride Denton High Schools’ student council organizes an homecoming carnival that engages students in games and activities.

6. Irvin High School in El Paso for Rockets, Rods & Rides Car Show
The Irvin HS student council organized a car show in order to kick-off the school’s 50th anniversary celebration and engage students and administrators involved in car clubs. They also worked with Teens in the Drivers Seat to raise awareness around teen driving issues.

7. Klein Collins High School for Support Zambia
The Klein Collins student council organized this project to support an orphanage being built in Zambia. Fundraisers were organized and monies and supplies were collected and sent to Zambia.

8. McKinney Boyd High School for Jayden’s Journey
The purpose of the project was to relive the financial burden on one of school’s the assistant principals created by the premature birth of his daughter, Jayden. Multiple fundraisers and events were held. In all, more this $13,000 was raised in support of this family.

9. Ronald Reagan High School in San Antonio for Tommy’s Tree
This project was created to reach out to elementary students and the community in order to promote conservation and environmental awareness. The student council created kits that were sent to schools around the state country and world, with a picture of a character and cameras for students to document environmental projects with Tommy the Tree.

10. South Grand Prairie High School for Meredith’s’ Run for Bikes
This student council joined with a program that collected bikes to give to needy families in honor of Meredith Hatch, who was killed by a drunk driver while riding her bike. 63 bikes were collected for this program due to the student council efforts.

Middle Level State Annual Conference Coming soon!!

TIME IS NOW
Our World. Our Responsibility. Period.
2009 Middle Level State Annual Conference
November 13-14, 2009
Austin Doubletree & Crowne Plaza Hotels

Stu Co Camp 2009

UTSA 2009

Wow… Camp this year was AMAZING!

I had the privilege of being a JC and having my hometown council at my camp. I was able to be both a camper and JC and it was something I will never forget. If you have never been to camp, I insist that you must go. Student Council Camp, whether it is at Trinity, UTSA, Texas State, or anywhere else, is the perfect way to bring your council together and jumpstart your year. During my three years at camp, I found that this was the time when my council came up with new ideas and found their inspiration for the upcoming year. It is always the people at camp who find a passion for student council that can not be found any other place than camp.

If you ever considered being a JC- totally do it! It was such a great experience.

Top reasons you should be a JC:
- You get to act like a fool for a week and it’s totally normal
- You can fully appreciate all the work that goes into camp
- Making up skits, songs, and other projects with twenty minutes notice and rocking it!
- Long chats with your other JC’s until the wee hours of the morning
- The delirious state you get into after not sleeping for a week.
- You get to watch your councils grow and become a family throughout the week.
- You get to dress up like a superhero/Hawaiian and confuse all the students on campus
- You can change a person’s life, just by setting an example.
- You get to wear a toga during the Olympics
- You get to ignite and inspire leadership in othersJ
- You make so many friends in one week that you can’t remember half of their names
- Serving others for a week gives you huge rewards in the end

If you are interested in becoming a JC all you need to do is go onto the TASC website and find the JC application. There are no words to explain how much fun you will have during this week. I encourage you to find the application and get ready for the one of the best weeks of your life.

There are a whole bunch of pictures from my camp experience… You can share yours too if you want!

Project of the Month...

Each month different student councils (as in you) can submit project ideas. You can send pictures, videos, or just word documents that show all of TASC how awesome your project is. You can comment this blog to send your info or you can email me at amcstudentcouncil@gmail.com. If you have pictures or video, then I suggest email.

If you do get the project of the month award, then you will receive a special prize and will have bragging rights the whole month. Plus, you can possibly impact the whole state of Texas, which is a little better than a prize:)

Since no one is in school yet, this month’s project of the month is a combo of all the state officer platforms during campaigning.


C.A.R.E. Week
Secretary- A&M Consolidated
Summary of our Week

At Consol we involved not only our high school, but in total seven schools from our district. 6,366 students actively participated in dress up days, a hat day and buying CARE week shirts. Each day student’s were encouraged to wear colors representing different types of cancer. Students were informed of these cancers each day through videos in advocate. Students also received candy with facts, bracelets, and ribbons to raise cancer awareness. We raised over $750 by hosting a “hats off to cancer survivor’s day” in which students paid to wear a hat in honor of teachers who battled cancer. Teacher’s who had were cancer survivors were given gifts on this day. Students were also encouraged to honor friends or family members who have been directly affected by cancer by placing their names on the wall of remembrance and honor. This colorful display totaled over 386 names. Another event was a Locks of Love donation, four girls from the high school cut off ten or more inches of hair for children who have lost their hair due to medical illness. These donations were made with love and caring heartsJ Our largest fundraiser was the selling of CARE week shirts. The profits from all shirt sales went directly to families in our school who are dealing with cancer. By purchasing a shirt, students could give a little of themselves to a great cause of CAREing. We raised $5,315 and on Friday schools all over our district were filled with students wearing CARE shirts, proud of honoring those who had battled this challenging disease.

If you are interested in having your own C.A.R.E. week, please email amcstudentcouncil@gmail.com and we will send you a “How to have a CARE Week” guide.

Thinking Outside of the Box: International Aide

President - Denton

Thinking outside of the box is one way to consider people other than oneself in our student councils. We want students to help others that do not go to their high schools or that don’t live in their town, state or country. We want to raise international awareness. We want to promote a higher standard of caring and working for others. The wonderful aspect of this program is that councils can design their project any way they want to match the goals of their school. When thinking of ways to work outside of the box, Denton High wants schools to consider their own international students, teachers and staff. We want schools to include every person in their student body in selecting their project. Thinking outside of the box could include collecting bags, blankets and bears for orphans in the U.S. or as simple as raising money for an organization outside of the country. We want people to work outside of their normal parameters and think outside of the box.

MDA
Vice-President
Little Cypress Mauriceville

Every spring, LCM participates in MDA's (muscular dystrophy association) shamrock sale. Student council sales green and gold shamrocks valued at $1 and $5 during all lunches to raise money to send a kid with muscular dystrophy to summer camp. It only takes $800 to send a kid to camp. With the power of TASC and it's 1300 member schools, we can easily change the lives of those affected by muscular dystrophy.

TASC 2009 Leadership Retreat/ Board Orientation

On Wednesday June 17, 2009 state officers and district presidents traveled to the beautiful T Bar M Camp in New Braunfels, Texas for our first leadership retreat. Some officers traveled only a few minutes, some took planes. There was a unique mixture of presidents from schools of only a few hundred, more particularly a girl with a class of 18, and of schools with 4,000 students. I always knew Texas was big, but I didn’t expect the wide variety of differences at our officer retreat. It’s truly amazing to get to collaborate when all of us come from so many diverse backgrounds.
Some really great work came out of this retreat. We had many group discussions on different qualities of leadership, parliamentary procedure, and business etiquette. We all learned new group activities and icebreakers and got a greater understanding of how TASC works. After all these informative sessions, the students and advisors broke into two sections. The advisors continued discussing state and district policy, but the students began “strategic planning.” We were given the task to create our top areas of concern which TASC should focus in the upcoming year and to give a professional presentation to the advisors on our plan of action to solve these problems. The officers were split up into small groups and asked to brainstorm problem areas in our schools. After making a huge web of all our concerns, these were the main areas we focused on:

-Involvement
-Energy and Environment
-Drugs and Alcohol
-Cultural Awareness/Respect
-Global Issues
-Internet safety
-Academics
-TASC

I bet these topics are also problems at your school. If you have any more which you think should be added to the list please let me know!

We came up with our topics list and then moved on to trying to pick one main concern area. After voting, Global Issues was chosen as the top category which students wanted to improve. The Global issues category contains many other issues, such as E&E, Health Awareness and education, so this was a way to connect many of the top categories. Once Global Issues was selected, the students analyzed which specific global issue should be addressed. Poverty was chosen as the specified type of global issue that the students would like to focus on because poverty connected involvement, health, and cultural awareness. This whole process inspired us to focus on Global Issues in the upcoming year and pursue this through our state project and theme; however, these projects and themes are not finalized.

The officers also emphasized improving the connectivity throughout TASC. They felt that TASC needs to improve connections between each district to continue and enact statewide goals. The students found that connectivity could be increased through improvements to the TASC website and the creating connections throughout the state.

TASC is in the process of making a new webpage. If you have any suggestions, please let us know. You’re the one using it – so we would love your input.

All officers presented this information to the advisors and they were supportive of our ideas. Because of the strategic planning, this blog now exists. Through our New Braunfels meeting your state officers are working toward establishing a state project, a state theme, a better website, and speakers, so you can have the best year in stu co possible.

All of these ideas are not final. These ideas are just the first session of brainstorming about this upcoming year. Things may change, but ultimately you need to know what your officers are thinking.

NASC Denver

Well, they say everything is bigger in Texas…and I must say, TASC is the biggest and best student council organization in all 50 states, Guam, Canada, and Puerto Rico. As the Texas delegation arrived in Denver, Colorado most of us were exhausted. Many schools had early flights, so we had to wake up in the wee hours of the morning (personally, I was up at three in the morning). But, upon arrival we all gained a new burst of energy in the cool Rockies. The theme for the week was "Leadership with an Altitude" and throughout the week we worked our way from base camp to the summit.

The entire week was just spectacular. If you have ever attended our state conference in Arlington, it was very similar, except on a smaller scale. This conference had an attendance of 1,500 people, whereas TASC state has 4,500 people. This made the whole experience more intimate, and we were able to really bond with people from other states. To meet stu co's from other states we traded pins and tshirts throughout the week. All of our name tags were completely covered with pins of all the different people we met. We also wore Texas shirts each day and our Talkin' Texas shirt was a huge favorite with other states.

Base Camp
Our first day at the conference was a ton of fun - we all gathered at the Highlands Ranch High School (which was totally gorgeous btw) and were welcomed by a cheersquad and our two state guides. We were assigned two students from Colorado, who are basically our tour guides and experts on everything we do at the conference. Our state guides were really awesome and by the end of the week, they were officially Texans! We also had a state room, which was decked out in Texas decor. This was our home base the entire week. Our next door neighbors, and great friends, were the New York delegates. They were definitely partying people and were very friendly neighbors. Who would've thought Texas and New York would become BFF's:) But back to the conference, the first day was filled with exciting events including outdoor games, bands, and lots of dancing. At opening session we heard from keynote speaker Cleo Parker Robinson. Cleo is the founder, executive artistic director, and choreographer of the 38-year-old artistic institution, Cleo Parker Roinson Dance, based in Denver. She is a great example of what characteristics a leader must have in order to be successful: we must always love what we do, feel what we do, and have ashay! We also got a "taste of Colorado" at an activities night filled with 'bounce' games and great food. That evening we watched a "Welcome to Base" video and then crashed after a long day.

Climb Day
Our climb started with an inspirational keynote address from Alvin Law. His presentation was called students to look past what they do not have and move toward what they can accomplish. Alvin was born without arms, yet all of NASC watched him play the drums and the piano with his feet. Even though Alvin had a disability, he chose not to focus on his loss, but to continue living to the best of his ability. Now, his hands are his feet. It was truly great to see how one can overcome obstacles; we were all inspired to go out and do amazing things with what we have. After this general session, we continued on to student small group workshops. This was much like our states' table talk where we share ideas. The Texas delegation split up and went to different programs with other states to discuss how individual events, like homecoming, are done differently. Just a fun fact, Canada doesn't have a homecoming or any really big dances, and I also found out that Texas is the only state that calls their freshman fish. After the swapshop, we spent the evening at Elitch Gardens, which is just like Six Flags (except they have smaller rides- everything is bigger in Texas).

Timberline Day
We spent this day at the University of Colorado at Boulder (that's a picture of it). The morning began with a keynote adress from Lloyd Lewan, who dared us to be leaders. His life of leadership inspired us all. The entire day was filled with activities including motivational speakers, the Recycling Xgames, and a panel of CU students. The campus was gorgeous and the whole experience a great way to get ideas for the future. That evening we all gathered at the football stadium for the Candle lighting program. NASC filled the stands and we were sad that the week was coming to and end. After a brief sing-a-long all of us were awed by a speech from Marquita Thomas. She spoke of the affect leaders have on others. She recognized that leaders Echo throughout their communities and leave footprints wherever they go. Marquita told us of a boy named Davy who had left footprints on her heart. This boy was a high school student just like us, who was class president, valedictorian, and struggling with cancer. He lost his battle with cancer, but he impacted their entire community. Now, his high school has a Davy Walk in honor of his great life. You could hear sobs throughout the stadium as we all lit our glowsticks in a wave. We all came together that last night, swaying from side to side, feeling the power of leadership, and a love for student council. On the hour bus ride back to Denver, the entire Texas delegation was so fired up that we sang, we danced, we cheered, and we laughed all the way home:)

Summit Day
Our final morning in Denver was pretty perfect. The closing general session was a beautiful orchestration of lights, songs, pictures, and even snow! Highlands Ranch did a fabulous job with the entire conference, and the last session was the cherry on top! At this session, Jonathan Sprinkles inspired us all to aim high and reject excuses. His life story really hit home with many of us and we could relate to his experiences. He taught us all "how the be a change maker." After our last session, we all headed our different ways to get to our hometowns. Some had flights directly after it ended, some had to wait a few hours, but we all left with a week at NASC which we will never forget!

There is a Picasa Picture Album of NASC.. check it out!

The First Blog...

Hey TASC!

As the new officers got together throughout the summer, we felt that we needed a better way to communicate to you.. the students of TASC. So, we came up with this great idea-- a blog, by students, for students. Through this blog, you will be able to keep up with all the ongoing events which are taking place in TASC. This is just in the process of being made, so we haven't worked out all the kinks; however, once it's finished, we hope to have a great way to connect all of Texas.