Oak Forest HS Freshmen Attend Leadership Workshop

Oak Forest High School Freshmen (back row, l to r) Abby Hogan, Aubrey Herron, Kylie Dwyer, Nathan Fedorenko, Kevin Ivins, (first row, l to r) Johnny Cooke, Grainne Giblin, Anna Zawislak, Emily Tibbett, Maddie Lopez, Annais Gangolf, Kimberly Burghard, and Jillian Decker, attended a freshman leadership workshop at Iron Oaks in Olympia Fields, where they challenged themselves in various leadership exercises in order to learn team building.

The trip is designed, according to Oak Forest High School Freshman Adviser Lynn Galloway, for team building. Each freshman learned something important about leadership in their short time at Iron Oaks. Freshman Annais Gangolf learned that “communication is a huge part of team work. Trust is also important as is keeping everyone in the loop of communication.” Gangolf used this communication in her team building exercise. “We had to get through a spider web. We lifted people and pushed them through it. We had to talk about it and plan it in advance on what we were going to do.” Freshman Grainne Giblin learned that “it was beneficial to have everyone’s views included in fixing a problem instead of one person’s views. That one person could be wrong.” Freshman Johnny Cooke learned that “you can’t do your own thing, you have to communicate with people.”

One of the obstacles that Cooke faced was in the form of a wooden box. Students had two planks to use in order to cross wood chips and had to communicate with each other in order to do it. “That was the hardest,” said Giblin. “We had to come back and try again.”