Cherry Creek Leadership Academy students reflect on experiences

Students in the Cherry Creek Leadership Academy met this month to build community, share in powerful experiences, and continue working through their social contract at their quarterly meeting. Students shared their thoughts on the program and how it has impacted them. (Watch the video here.)

“Leadership [Academy] is important to me, personally, because it definitely helped me find myself,” said Dedicated David.* “It helped me search deep and really find who I was inside with the powerful experiences that we’ve had. It pushed me to be better for myself and my community.”

This month, Leadership Academy partnered with True North, a non-profit that works with individuals around addiction and recovery. Students listened to a ten-minute guided meditation to help students visualize their highest desires for their future and release the beliefs that are getting in the way. Students shared powerful reflections after the meditation of how their thinking shifted and ways to manage the emotions that arose from the experience.

Students agreed that the program has helped them, including providing a safe space, friends, trusted adults, and a sense of purpose. Students shared that it helped them stretch outside their comfort zone and that the program provides them with experiences they might not otherwise have.

“Confidence has been a really big piece because for a while because I didn’t really know how to give anyone advice,” shared J Money Jewell. “Leadership Academy has given me a voice to spread to others, where I’m strong behind my words, because this has given me the backbone I’ve always needed.”

Leadership Academy launched as a response to a tragic wave of violence in March of 2022 and is a yearlong program that aims to break the cycle of violence while empowering students as community leaders. The program re-engages students with education and their community, working to prevent youth violence through a grassroots approach. Initially funded by Cherry Creek Schools Foundation, the program has since secured more than one million in grants from the City of Aurora as well as Arapahoe County.

More than 150 students have completed the program or continued through three cohorts since 2022 with a 90% average attendance rate. Some of the positive impacts have included decreases in student behavioral incidents, increases in school credits earned, and increases in school attendance during the school year. The program’s staff are currently working on a blueprint for other school districts and organizations to replicate the success.

 

*Students and adults in Leadership Academy have handles they use as identifiers to build community and a shared space.