Lakeside enlists student leaders
Eight students at Lakeside High School have committed to participate in a national leadership program developed by Chick-fil-A.
Business and career teacher Karlie Davenport led the group’s kickoff activities Friday. The yearlong program is meant to prepare students in grades 9-12 for successful futures as dynamic leaders.
The group includes four seniors, three sophomores and one freshmen. The seniors involved are Triston Dickinson, Spencer James, Nick Johnson and Andrew Neighbors.
Sophomores in the group are Destiny Bastedo, Montana Cramer and Tyler Tidwell. Jaclyn Jasnocha
is the only freshman.
The Chick-fil-A Leader Academy launched in 2013 in more than 20 high schools in the Atlanta metro area. It now serves more than 600 schools and has 20,000 users on the platform.
Each participating school holds a kickoff event to learn about the program. Lakeside’s participants watched a twohour video on Friday.
The video included activities to help the students learn more about each other, leadership and the program. They also prepared 75 meals for a local food bank.
“It’s all about leadership, but it does include community service,” Davenport said. “The meals we are shipping today are going to go straight to our food bank here.”
Davenport was asked before the school year if she would be willing to facilitate the program. She researched to learn more about it and reached out to Jonathan Richardson, franchised restaurant operator.
The program is fully funded through sponsorships from local Chick-fil-A operators, Chick-fil-A Inc., and Coca-Cola to offset the annual $4,000 cost of tuition per school. Richardson’s restaurant sponsored Lakeside’s program.
Richardson provided the students with free lunches on Friday and joined them for the kickoff.
“Chick-fil-A to me, and to most of the company, is more than chicken,” Richardson said. “We are in the business of people and one of those avenues that sort of attracted me to this program is getting to use our resources and invest in you all.”
The Leader Academy is intended to impactful for students and simple for teachers with an interactive curriculum that requires little planning by the schools. The program is meant to engage students in their interests, expose them to new and unique ideas and insights, and equip them with tangible tools for their leadership development.
Students said they chose to be involved because the program sounded fun, they wanted to be able to help others and they want to impact the community. Richardson said he wanted to be involved for the same reasons. He said he is ex- cited to work with the students and help them become better leaders and influencers in the community.
“Something that I have learned along the way is leadership is mostly about influence,” Richardson said. “Even though I’m the owner of the restaurant, I can’t make anyone do something they will not choose to do.
“Leveraging the talents and the skills that you have to positively influence, whether it is classmates, younger persons, someone older, someone you work with, work for or something that you actually have authority over, I am looking forward to you getting some more tools and using this as a resource to help you do that better, have a better impact and have a better understanding of that responsibility.”
The group will meet once each month and remain engaged with a seven-month curriculum. The program takes a project-based leadership approach to provide lessons and build up to student-led and student-run “Impact Projects” in the community.
A maximum of 30 students at each school can be involved with the main Leader Academy program during the year. Students are encouraged to invite their friends into the program and involve others in projects.
“We are hoping this year, through our events, people see what is going on and then next year we can have more kids,” Davenport said.
Schools can apply for microgrants to organize their Impact Projects in April. The Chickfil-A Foundation has partnered with the Leader Academy to offer $100,000 in supports of projects.
An estimated 1 million people have already been served by Leader Academy Impact Projects. Students can learn more about projects by other schools and share information about their own with the hashtag “CFA Leader Academy” on social media.