Quarter 1 SOC Reflection

     The first quarter of the 2018-2019 school year is already ending! Looking back reflecting on what all we have created as a class and within our organization makes me excited for the upcoming quarters. This year I have seen a lot of growth within SOC by partnering with Nelson Co. High School more so than we ever have in the past with the Pride Bowl and the TNHS and NCHS SOC Retreat. This quarter I started inserting games into the #GAMESHEET and used RUSH as a good tool to recruit more people for the team. In quarter 2 I want to create some chances for team bonding and get the team together to go support other programs that are in season. Also, I want to get Legacy Core meetings planned before the season gets in full swing. In SOC for quarter 2 I want to learn more about video editing to create strong Ignite Videos for future events to share on social media and I want to partner with people in the community more to create REMARKABLE events. I would also like to see SOC start planning some CARE initiatives like the Angel Tree Project we did last year because winter will be approaching very soon! Some new ideas I have to get more students involved and engaged in what is happening around the school is to utilize Twitter polls more than we have in the past and try creating a hashtag that students can use at large events. Also, I think if we use people outside of SOC in videos sharing information that are supposed to create hype around events more students will see and come because it isn't just kids in SOC CREATing hype, although they should be LEADing it. I am looking forward to see how SOC will CARE, CONNECT, and CREATE the rest of the school year!

Quarter 4 SOC Reflection

     The 2017-2018 school year is coming to an end and as it closes out I want to reflect on what I have accomplished this quarter and what I hope to accomplish next quarter. This year I have gotten to collaborate with Coach Smith and work towards building a stronger TNHS Softball program. Next year, I hope the student-athletes that are members of this program become better by being accountable for practices and service projects and continuing the mindset of program before team and team before self. I can assist with this by having more face-to-face meaningful conversations, setting strong deadlines, and encouraging feedback from one another to become better students, teammates, and community members. Next year, I hope to see our team serve the community more. As a member of Legacy Core I have shared thoughts about service projects and we have collectively brainstormed a multitude of ideas, so I hope in the upcoming year we can see these ideas come to light. Also, I want to focus more on sharing and celebrating the growth that we experience in a season. This season we made history within the program by going 7-1 in regular season district games and being the first ever softball team at TNHS to be the #1 seed going into the District Tournament. The hard work that the team has put in to accomplish this deserves to be shouted out and I want to find other ways to do this than just Twitter and the TNHS Softball blog. An idea that I may need to start incorporating this is to share celebrations like this with the Tuesday Newsday Crew so they can shout out the growth when we watch the news Tuesday or I could CREATE artwork to celebrate the team and put it on the Living Digital Announcements. With this being said Legacy Core and I have also been working together to brainstorm ideas to celebrate the people who help us along the way during the season whether it be a parent working on a fundraiser, a bus driver, or our announcer; they show dedication to the team too and their hard work needs to be celebrated as well.
     Communication has never been a struggle with the softball team due to the accessibility of the Remind101 and our team group chat, but in the upcoming year I hope to see Legacy Core meet more often to increase their CONNECTion in that part of the program and try to have more team bonding dates; although we did have a lot this year due to weather conditions. I want to encourage more face-to-face collaboration outside of practice to CREATE stronger bonds on the team and allow for more memories to be made. This will contribute to our mission and vision by ensuring constant growth and embracing new experiences through the sport of softball. I want to continue connecting through social media and group messages for the future because it is a strong way to CONNECT with the community, but we need to build upon the foundations that we have CREATEd to continue to grow.
     I have come a long way this year from where I started and I look forward to continuing to grow. I am proud of my work on CREATing initiatives and taking steps to understand tools like the Gamesheet, so I can utilize that more next year and also, continue to be an active member in SOC. I look forward to my new position as SOC Public Relations Officer and hope that this challenge and role will push me to become a better LEADER within my school, my student organizations, and SOC. Next year, I want to grow on CONNECTing more with other organizations and actually accomplishing the ideas we have thought about to show CARE to the community. Coach Smith, the team, and I have brainstormed a lot of ideas to work on before our season next year and when we accomplish these ideas next year it will create a stronger foundation for our program and show remarkable growth from previous years. I am overjoyed to see what next school year has in store for SOC and TNHS Softball!

History in the Making

Congratulations to our TNHS Lady Generals for being Regular Season District Champions with a 7-1 record!

#GoGenerals #WhatIsYourWhy?

Generals Make History

Congratulations to our Lady Generals for their first ever win over Washington County with a final score of 9-5!

#GoGenerals #WhatIsYourWhy

Quarter 3 Flycloser Reflection

     Care is a value we strive to embody at Thomas Nelson High School and I exemplify many aspects of caring through the initiatives I take on in the SOC class and in my student organizations. Our motto is to always take care of yourself, take care of each other, and take care of this place and this also extends out to my community. This quarter I have shown care by helping my school community plan one of our largest events, Winter Formal. I assisted with creating a music playlist for the dance and I also stayed after the dance to help clean all the decor and rearrange the chairs and tables. Another way I have showed care is for other student organization leaders by leading a Genius Bar in class on blogger to help them use their blog as a form of communication with not just their organization, but the community. Also, I organized a Legacy Core Application that will be shared with my team soon, so they can apply and we can start the process for this years Legacy Core and I can work closely with that group to create other initiatives that the softball team will undertake in the future. Also, to show care and promote community involvement I have updated the blog to add the 2018 Softball Schedule so all can see and come and support the hard work the team has been putting in. I have also collaborated with other organizations; for example, the Student Technology Leadership Program to work with the softball team on a team challenge our coach has set forth for us, which is to make a "hype video" that promotes our team and season and I collaborated with their representative, Sydney Judd, so we could start getting some ideas and use their support in editing and creating the video. Not only has STLP assisted me, but I have tried to assist my other classmates too through feedback in paper ceiling presentations. Recently, our boys and girls basketball teams were playing in the district tournament at Washington County High School and Josie Reiter, the girls basketball representative, asked for assistance on promoting involvement and theme ideas and I gave her feedback on theme ideas that were later voted on on Twitter and I helped her with the idea of getting fatheads for all the varsity players on both teams for the student sections. All in all, I have cared for my surrounding community, my school community, and my team community by openly communicating, assisting, supporting, and showcasing and sharing ideas.

     Communication is a key component in building a strong foundation for a program and we strive so connect efficiently in and out of our organization. For example, frequently updating the blog with schedule, celebrations, and upcoming announcements so it is out there for anyone to access. Using the blog as a foundation of sharing information is key because it is public and the community and team can easily access it. Connecting with the community is huge to promote involvement so we also use our Twitter account to share out news and celebrations. If you scroll through our Twitter you may see tweets about strides we've made in practice, celebration of growth, celebrations of wins, or upcoming announcements about big games to encourage more people to come out and support. Another way we are trying to promote community involvement is sending out donation letters as a team. It was every players responsibility to gather 15 addresses and 15 stamps so we could send out letters to ask for the community to contribute to our program and hopefully this will raise awareness about the team and make them want to come watch us. Also, we use the Remind101 system to keep players and parents aware of schedules for the upcoming week, changes, and needs for events like our Soup & Silent Auction is important. The Remind system serves as a good tool because everyone receives the same message and knows what is expected of them and what times/deadlines they have to meet. For example, our Soup & Silent Auction is coming up and we have been using the Remind101 to send out messages about what is needed for the auction and how much assistance is needed which is a good tool because the whole team can see what is needed and no person is unaware of what is going on within our organization. Along with communicating with the community and player/parents I have to constantly maintain a platform of communication with Coach Smith. Other than face to face conversations I use my email to talk to Coach about what roles she wants me to play with upcoming events and announcements. Specifically, Coach has asked me to complete items such as a Legacy Core Application to share with the team and because we have constant communication I was able to complete this task in a timely manner and she could post it in our team Google Classroom for all the players to access. Google Classroom is also another foundation we use to communicate with the team. Coach Smith has ownership of the Google Classroom, but shares out important information or videos for the team to access; such as, the Legacy Core Application, 2018 Schedule, or our Team Guidelines packet. Connecting with the school happens by word of mouth, but also I try to create artwork about large events like creating a slide to promote our Soup & Silent Auction and displaying it on the Digital Announcements that play throughout the school day.

     Strong organizations start with the creation of a steady foundation and the creation of new things to build on top of that. This quarter we added a new foundation to our program to enable it to be more meaningful by creating a mission and vision statement and continuing the tradition of the Lady Generals Softball Soup & Silent Auction as a major fundraiser for our upcoming season. In addition to these things this quarter I have created an application for Legacy Core and we now have our 2018 Softball Legacy Core members who have started taking on new initiatives within the program. Also, as a Legacy Core member and SOC member I collaborated with others and came up with the new tradition of writing 3 letters: a letter to yourself, a letter to the team, and a letter to softball. The letter to yourself will be saved and opened back up when you become a senior at TNHS. The letter to the team will be opened up and read to everyone at a team bonding event later in the season, and the letter to softball will be an optional read aloud session at a team bonding event. Also, this quarter I have created excitement around the blog by updating it frequently and posting pictures on it so it looks appealing, but still gives organization information and I created excitement around the RUSH booth this year by decorating it with multiple colors and props, adding a picture slideshow, and having a game that allowed people to want to interact with my booth. To assist in the process of making jersey inventory easier for Coach Smith I created a data sheet to mark numbers and keep everything organized so we can use it in years to come. In the SOC class I contributed to the creation of a music playlist for winter formal and the designing and ordering of the tickets with Ms. Downing's help. Also, I helped with advertisement for Homecoming by creating a video of all the nominees and information about the Homecoming Game. Creating new rituals, traditions, and continuing past ones in an organization is what is going to build up energy and enthusiasm around it and this will benefit the program and school.

Blog Reflection #2

     In SOC we have began to focus our energy surrounding the notion of "What is your WHY?"; the same idea what we have been using in softball and this has gotten a lot of attention and shifted the mindset of the members of this class. Focusing on this question enables this class to create things that we were unsure that we could create because it instills passion in us and gets us thinking about why are we doing what we are doing. why do we want to create this, why am I in this class? This focus question has pinpointed many things we have done as a class. For example, if your "WHY" is to create a closer bond between TNHS and the community you may shed light on the Bardstown Christmas Parade. The Bardstown Christmas Parade is one example of students putting their school before themselves because instead of staying inside and watching the parade on TV students came outside in the cold walked, waved, smiled, and gave candy the whole time to show the community that this is who we are at TNHS. Our WHY at that point was to show the community what we have been working towards and who we are through our actions and we succeeded. I think  participating in future community events and service projects as a whole class will continue to strengthen that bond between school and community as partners so we can collaborate with community members year round.
     The TNHS Student Organization Council became a class this year and this has allowed more time and effort to be put into projects than ever before because we meet daily for almost 5 days every week and it has shown through on our end products. SOC also partnered with New Haven and participated in the Iron Horse Festival to exemplify our care for our community and our partnership with them ended in a donation made by the New Haven community because of all the help we offered. This donation was then used to be put back in our community for the Angel Tree Project. It could have been just as easy for us to take that money and buy ourselves t-shirts or food or other luxurious things, but we chose to put it back into our community. This is the foundation of the legacy we want to create through SOC through TNHS and it is only the start. In the future I encourage all to continue to participate in whole class events; "the more the merrier" is the truth when it comes to student involvement and I think when we continue to do projects like this year round we will really show the community what our why is and fulfill our class mission: to CONNECT student organizations, CREATE a strong community, and demonstrate CARE by building a legacy for the future.

Week of 2/5/18 Workout Schedule!

Wednesday 2/7 and Thursday 2/8:
3:30-4 p.m. Team Bonding (Hamilton ELL)
4-4:45 p.m. Conditioning (inside TNHS)
4:45-5:15 p.m. #WYW Quest (Hamilton ELL)

**TRYOUTS will be held on Thursday 2/15 and Friday 2/16 from 4-6 p.m. (be prepared to be in the indoor facility or outside)**

Week of 1/29/18 Workout Schedule!

Monday (1/29) and Wednesday (1/31):
     3:30-4:00 p.m.-- Team Bonding
     4:00-4:45 p.m.-- Conditioning
     4:45-5:15 p.m.-- #WYW Quest

**May go outside Wednesday TBD**

Week of 1/8/18 Workout Schedule!

Tuesday 1/9/18: 3:30-5:15 p.m. @ TNHS


Thursday 1/11/18: 3:30-5:15 p.m. @ TNHS

Happy New Year!

Go Generals!