Lauren Watts
Editor
On Tuesday, September 28, student leaders from Dyersburg and Dyer County High Schools were rounded up to participate in the Dyer County Youth Leadership program taking place at the University of Tennessee at Martin. The program is sponsored by the Dyersburg/Dyer County Chamber of Commerce and Security Bank.
The program, traditionally, was for high school sophomore students, but due to Covid canceling the event last year, high school juniors were also allowed to attend the trip. For each school, the students are accompanied by one faculty advisor. Senior counselor Anna Claire Lane was the faculty advisor to attend the trip with the Dyersburg High School students.
“[The trip] is trying to expose our future leaders, or hopefully our future leaders, of Dyersburg and Dyer County to more areas of our great county, and show them more of the entities of where they can find employment and pick up more leadership skills,” Lane said.
The students of both schools took part in completing activities that not only taught them how to be better leaders, but also how to work together as one community.
“I do think that it taught me to be a better leader, especially through the tasks we did together. These tasks included trust falls, obstacle courses, teamwork competitions, and games where we had to talk and ask each other questions to get to know the people around us,” junior Harper Burchfiel said.
Burchfiel states that though she didn’t know what to expect from the event, she loved every bit of it.
“The thing I most enjoyed was getting out of my comfort zone and engaging with and talking to people that I probably would not have ever talked to if it was not for Dyer County Youth Leadership,” Burchfiel said.
The students learned that anyone with any job in any profession can be a leader.
“Being a leader and learning the characteristics of a leader can benefit you more than just in a ‘business’ world. It provides you to be someone with your family, friends, coworkers, and classmates to be the person that someone can count on and trust. There are so many corrupt leaders and people in the world, and I think it is important to learn how to be not only a good leader, but a good person too,” Burchfiel said.
The students from DHS and DCHS will attend more of these trips throughout the school year. The program will focus on more topics to teach the students how to not only be superb leaders, but how to also be good people.
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