Leadership Opportunities
Summer Challenge!
The Summer Challenge! is a two-week leadership program for rising juniors and seniors from SPSG and Western and Mercy High Schools. Participating students choose from among three strands: How to Become a Great Team Captain; How to Revive a Languishing Club; and How to Be an Effective Group Facilitator. Groups of 5-8 girls work with faculty and student mentors to capture their vision, hone their communication skills, create long- and short-term goals, polish public speaking, create effective teamwork, and explore their styles of leadership.
The Discover Leadership Institute
A joint collaboration between the Center for Leadership in Education at the University of Richmond and SPSG, the DLI is a two-day coed program open to all high school students in the area. The focus of the institute is both theoretical and practical and challenges students to think about leadership, followership, and community engagement.
Constructs of Leadership: Keys to Success
Students can elect this one-semester course in their junior or senior year. In addition to studying different models of leadership, exploring their leadership styles, and honing their leadership skills, students interview a successful person to inquire about his or her path to success and some of the challenges and moral dilemmas he or she has faced. Field trips into political, economic, and artistic centers of Baltimore are an important component of the course, so that students come to appreciate the gem that our city is and to understand its importance to the prosperity of the region.
Ethics in Leadership Days
In August and January, SPSG hosts an ethics day for members of honor and disciplinary boards from Bryn Mawr School, Loyola, Roland Park Country School, Friends School, Boys’ Latin School, and St. Paul’s School. Students examine the values espoused by their school communities and the policies and procedures practiced by their schools to uphold their respective honor codes and community values.
Senior Speeches
Every senior at SPSG is mentored as she prepares for her senior speech, delivered to the entire school community at Prayers. Selected faculty members help her with the process of planning, writing, and perfecting her speech and she is trained in the use of a microphone as she hones her skill at a personal workshop before she delivers her speech.
Group Facilitation
Sophomores, juniors, and seniors volunteer to be trained in the art of group facilitation so that they can lead discussions in our three diversity days planned throughout the year. The student group plans the diversity days and works hard to perfect their individual styles of facilitation.
Club Presidents’ Council
Club Presidents meet once each quarter to discuss the purposes and missions of their clubs, to formulate their goals for the year, and to explore their individual styles of leadership.
Community Service Organization and Stewardship Council
The Community Service Organization is responsible for monitoring the community service requirement and planning and executing some of the outreach possibilities available to SPSG students. Members of the Community Service Organization serve on the Stewardship Council, which oversees all community service initiatives sponsored by the school.
Activities to Develop Sophomore Leadership
The leadership faculty and members of the sophomore team work with sophomores as they begin planning for their ring dance in the fall of their junior year. Running meetings, brainstorming, and teamwork are stressed.
Junior Leadership Days
The dean of students, the director of diversity and leadership education, and the director of college counseling work with members of the junior class to help them develop leadership skills as they rise to more leadership positions in the school.
