Day 1 Monday August 12

Our first day

Today I participated in many interesting activities. My favorite of them all was the brand yourself activity. It was very helpful to visualize and share my goals. When I understood why I wanted to pursue my goal, I had a new sense of accomplishment and reason to fulfill that goal. If it is only internal, it is very easy to give up on it. However, if other people knwo about it, they will expect you and possibly help you, to complete your goals. This new kind of pressure may be very useful to make sure the goal is not only internalized but is also pursuable. This taught me a very important life lesson I will apply in the future. Rohan

Today we did an activity where we ranked global problems by how severe the problem is. But instead of having everyone openly contribute, we experimented by having some people wear bandanas who were only allowed to speak by raising their hand and being acknowledged. This tested how we would treat each other especially when there was a ‘minority’ (the people with the bandanas) present with a disadvantage. We ended up getting into an argument about 2 issues and which one would be more severe than the other. In the end, we compromised and completed the activity. We realized the people with the bandanas were treated unfairly although they were the majority of the group. This caused a discussion about problems in the workplace pertaining to the discrimination of certain races, genders, sexualities, etc.

Olivia

Hello, my name is Erik and I am going into my freshman year at La Jolla Country Day School. I decided to attend this class to learn to become a leader instead of a follower. An activity I enjoyed today was the debate activity. It was interesting to see the different opinions of different people on various topics, and it accurately simulated how minority groups feel in today’s society. There were 4 people who were free to talk as much as they liked, and 7 people who had to be called on before voicing their opinions. This represented minority groups in modern society because it shows how some people may have more authority over others, or how some people think of themselves as inferior or superior to those around them because of their identity.

Erik



Today I liked being able to have a discussion about organizing a list of pressing matters for today’s citizens. It was fun being able to have a conversation about important matters. I’m glad the other students took it seriously and were respectful with answers and questions. The level of thought and respect that went into the activity was appreciated, as it gave me the opportunity to have a real discussion about actual current issues. 
Alex

Today I learned a bit about leadership that I never learned in school. I learned about the characterisitcs commonly found in leaders. I learned about how a psycological study showed how influential leaders and businesses operated through advertisement. I found it interesting that the speaker on the TED talk was able to figure out a piece of Apple's Marketing Strategy and how they make so much money.

Simon Sinek was able to analyze how Apple makes ok products but millions of people still buy them, even though Samsung and other companies have ok markerting and not as many people use their products even though tech sites prove them to be better.

Natalija

Today was an iNtErEstinG day considering how much we did and how much I connected with the kids around me in the class. My favorite activity was the discussion we had after 2 hours of silence. We openly talked and discussed some of the global world problems and attempted to order them in a list from most pressing to least. There was a lot of debate, but also laughter in between; it was the perfect icebreaker. From there on we were more animated as a class.

Eesh


The researching activity stood out to me.I learned Barack Obama won a Nobel Peace Prize and Alan Turing cracked the Nazi code. But the message I took away from the exercise was that there are people who were some of the best leaders, and people who were some of the most despised leaders yet they had similar leadership traits. 

Gavin


Although we did many activities today, the one that resonated the most with me was the card game. The game was an activity where all of us got a card and each card signified a certain ranking (King was the highest, Queen 2nd....). Then the teacher told us to "treat everyone to their value". We all treated the people with King cards well and the lower numbers badly assuming value meant the what was on our card.

Neha retrieving her lanyard during a team building activity

This simulation showed us how we stereotype people of higher classes as better or more deserving; when really everyone is valuable and class has nothing to do with it.
Neha