This year, I took the drastic step of starting a club with a few friends. I had originally meant it to be a cybersecurity club, but quickly realized that a coding and programming languages club would suit the needs of the school much more. We started engaging in meetings almost every week and discussed the club idea over Discord and Google Chat for hours every day before the first drafts and emails were sent out to school administrators. We also started sending out weekly emails within the leadership community, which acted as guides to what we should do. We had a charter, which was our set of rules as leaders, and a vision plan, which ended up being carried out a bit differently from how we had imagined it. We found an advisor in Mr. Evancho, and we started our first meeting with him a couple weeks after we sent him our introductory email. Following that, it just took a couple leadership meetings after school, some poster hanging work, and one of the first student-led (probably the first student-led) clubs in BRMS was formed.
At our introductory meeting, there were around 50 people there, which exceeded expectations. We had spent effort getting the word through friends, social media, posters, school announcements, and teachers, and it paid off. We started with a presentation and some other icebreakers before playing Blooket and giving out candy (which is apparently a really good incentive for people in middle school). The first meeting was a massive success, although some kids made it a bit too rowdy, and the fact that it was student-led caused some issues as we (the leaders) didn't seem to have that 'teacher aura' at first. We made sure to address all the issues concerning our first meeting in our weekly email threads. In the following weeks, we broke off into subgroups, which were Python, Java, Cybersecurity, C++ and Computer Engineering, and AI and Machine Learning. I think we might've been too ambitious with this, as the topics and their contents were much harder than those taught in high school clubs, and to a much higher level of rigor. Cybersecurity ended up being too hard for everyone involved and not as popular, and AI and Machine Learning ended the year with around one person in the group, as running AI models took a lot of time. I also saw that in my subgroup, Python, people were starting to get either too bored (mostly people who already had some prior knowledge) or couldn't keep up (mostly people who were just starting). This was an issue. I proposed starting 'Advanced Python', but it was simply too late in the year for that, and our 'final projects' and 'end of the year events' were about to start.
It turns out time flies, and we were nearing the end of the club's inaugural season in March. We had introduced everyone to some sort of project by the end of the year but didn't have enough time to finish them, so we may decide to re-launch the club by the end of May. We also had blooket contests and kahoots during the last few meetings, which gave participants chances to win prizes and got everyone fired up. I think we ended the year of debating, hard work, and countless planning hours pretty well, and we're currently in the process of reading applications for students who applied for leadership in 2024-2025 (this is student-led, after all). I just like the thought that I made a permanent impact on my school for the better, and maybe BRCS will still be around in 10 years (hopefully).
