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Tristan Marinch, 17, left, and Abigail Mroz, 17, center, seniors at Woodland Hills High School and Sophie Chumburidze, 15, a sophomore at Mt. Lebanon work on a project during a breakout session at the Penn State Extension's Summer Student Boot Camp.
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High school students participate at this summer camp to build leadership skills

Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette

High school students participate at this summer camp to build leadership skills

For many, sitting in the middle of a cramped room while holding a mirror to your face as strangers yell at you is the stuff of nightmares.

But the mental health exercise, also known as Mirror Mirror, is when a participant sits in the middle of the room holding a mirror to themselves while those on the outskirts tell the mirror holder what they admire about them. The activity is meant to teach people that no matter how they view themselves, they are valued, said Ramera Powell, 20, from Pittsburgh.

And as dozens of people hooted and hollered compliments to the mirror holder during the Student Summer Boot Camp at the Penn State Center, Downtown, on Friday, the onslaught of kindness even brought one participant to tears.

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“It’s not always what’s in your head. It’s what’s around you, and you never know what someone thinks about you or how things are changing around you until you’re told because we only have our perspectives,” Ms. Powell said.

Ms. Powell was among more than a dozen other young adults who attended the Student Summit Boot Camp on Friday, which aims to empower students to teach their peers about topics that matter to them. These topics include mental health, racial injustice, climate change, women’s rights, animal welfare and LGBTQ+ issues.

For Ms. Powell, a rising junior at Howard University who attended the program when she was at Woodland Hills High School, the camp is the perfect opportunity for her to reconnect with her friends from her hometown and teach people about mental health as she studies to become a psychiatrist.

“I know when it all ties back, it’s going to be how you’re feeling. Because even the strongest person in the world needs hope,” she said.

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For the other students, the daylong event featured a leadership discussion, where students explored their talents, free lunch and break-out sessions for them to delve into their own interests across various subjects.

Erin Wall, an English teacher at Woodland Hills High School, has been planning the Student Summit Boot Camp since its inception in 2020 and wants the camp, open to students from all over the area, to be a melting pot of different student experiences.

“What’s really interesting about the schools that have participated as we look we come from all different [places]. It’s rural, urban, suburban, and it really gets kids an opportunity to talk to kids they wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to,” she said.

With an increasingly divided public, Ms. Wall said it was vital to create a space where students can safely discuss topics that matter to them, free from the judgment they could find in the real world or a classroom setting.

That camp environment, organizers said, encouraged the students to openly discuss their differing perspectives and experiences, which is highlighted in an exercise about how the participants viewed their ideal leader.

In an activity where groups of students were asked to draw a picture of and describe the qualities of a leader, many opted for the traditional view of men and women who were intelligent, ambitious and caring, but other groups subverted some organizers’ expectations for what makes a leader.

Some student groups explored the idea that non-human objects could take on leadership qualities and opted to draw a tree and a river as their ideal leaders. They described a tree’s growth and stability or a river’s strength, flexibility and persistence as the qualities that distinguished leadership.

“It was amazing because I’ve done leadership seminars with adults, and they never actually broke out of the mold of the example with the person we showed them,” said Michael White, an education program specialist at Penn State. “To take that and turn that into what they did, it was amazing that their minds were even picking up the concepts and breaking it down,”

Through the activities that students participated in Friday, Ms. Wall said, they will create lessons on the topics like climate change and racial justice to teach their peers in larger learning events during the academic year.

But before the students can start teaching, they will be treated to a reward trip to the Kennywood amusement park Saturday, where the event organizers will treat them to a day of fun activities and rollercoasters.

“That was a little build into the program, to say ‘Hey, let’s go have some fun,’” said Matthew Crutchman, an event organizer and extension educator at Penn State.

Nick Pasion: npasion@post-gazette.com or on Twitter @nicholaspasion.

First Published: July 29, 2022, 10:13 p.m.

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Tristan Marinch, 17, left, and Abigail Mroz, 17, center, seniors at Woodland Hills High School and Sophie Chumburidze, 15, a sophomore at Mt. Lebanon work on a project during a breakout session at the Penn State Extension's Summer Student Boot Camp.  (Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette)
Tristan Marinch, 17, works on a project during a breakout session at the Penn State Extension's Summer Student Boot Camp at Penn State Center downtown Friday, Jun. 29, 2022, in Pittsburgh.  (Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette)
Lauren Palamara, a youth educator with Communitopia, left, works on a project with Ashley Blye-Timbers, 16, center, and CeCe Guest, 17, seniors at Woodland Hills High School during a breakout session at the Penn State Extension's Summer Student Boot Camp.  (Pam Panchak/Post-Gazette)
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