Student Council Exchange

One of my extra duties at Southmoore is serving as one of two sponsors for Student Council.  One of the activities sponsored by our state STUCO "district" is to have exchanges of our councils between our member high schools.  Last week Southmoore's STUCO hosted the STUCO from Yukon High School (in a suburb just west of the Oklahoma City).  Yesterday, Southmoore's STUCO collectively became roamers of remote roads by traveling to Purcell High School (a more rural community south of Oklahoma City).

A symbol of welcome and friendship:
Southmoore SaberCat and the Purcell Dragon

While Yukon is a school near the same size as Southmoore (@2000 students), Purcell (@450 students) provided our Southmoore kids with a chance to see how academic life is similar and different within a smaller and more rural environment.  Some of the differences noticed by our kids: their entire library could fit inside of the computer lab within our library, the total area of their classroom wing would fit within 1/4 of our classroom space, they have one assistant principal while we have four, they have two counselors while we have six, they have one gymnasium and we have two, etc.  Despite the differences noticed, our kids noticed many similarities in curriculum (our students sat through a class session), technology available within classrooms, difficulty with efforts of STUCO trying to get all students involved in something extracurricular, social-family-academic-etc. problems faced by students.

One issue that most of their STUCO kids thought would be a major differences between their rural school and our suburban school was their agricultural program (plant growing techniques, raising of livestock, and other agri-science options).  In fact, many of our students initially thought this was a big difference too.  What struck me as being humorous about this is that our school district ALSO has an agricultural program.  While our program is offered to students at all three of our high schools (Moore, Southmoore, and Westmoore), the actual classroom space and green house is provided on the campus of Moore High and then there is a singular location for a district owned farm to serve as a practical "lab" space.  Since the classroom space is not on our campus this is why many of our own students were not familiar with this option.  It was fun to see their expressions in discovering that this "difference" was actually a "similarity".

All in all, the Southmoore SaberCat STUCO and the Purcell Dragon STUCO had a great time getting to know each other and developing some friendships with our students within STUCO District 8.  Our STUCO will continue our efforts of roaming the remote roads and learning about other schools and their local councils.