The door opens and an office assistant walks through the door. She hands the teacher a note and leaves. The teacher glances at the note and casually hands it to Jessica, and then continues on with class. When Jessica opens the note she has no clue what it is about. The note is an application form for her city’s Teen Council. It says that she has been recommended to join this group by one of her school’s assistant principals. After discussing it with her parents, Jessica decides to join. Little did she know that this group would present her so many amazing opportunities.

At the first meeting Jessica realized that she was the only who had joined from her school and that she did not know a single person. This was a little bit scary at first, but she quickly realized that it would be so great to meet ten new people. At this meeting they discussed what teen council was and created their goals they would like to accomplish for the year. Jessica really had no idea what she was getting herself into, and found this meeting very helpful. She learned the teen council was a group of students from all of the different high schools. Every year they decided how they wanted to positively impact their city. This year they had decided to do random acts of kindness throughout the city and to try to get a lot more teenagers involved as well.
The first event Jessica attended with the teen council was to help decorate the mayor’s float. When she arrived, she realized that nobody else signed up to help and so it would just be her and the sponsor, Jamie. This was a great way to get to know Jamie and learn even more about what she had planned for the year to come. Throughout the discussion, Jamie mentioned that every year the teen council took a trip to Washington DC to attend a leadership conference. The trip was completely free: hotel, plane tickets, food, everything. It was all paid for by the city. Unfortunately, they could only afford for three members to go and everyone who wanted to go would have to apply. To apply, each person had to write a paragraph about why he/she wanted to go, and all the different ways they had been involved during the year. This was something Jessica had not known about previously, and it sparked her interest.
As the year went on, the teen council did many more acts of kindness to benefit the people around them. Some acts were big, some small. One week they made cards for the police and fire departments to thank them and tell them that they were truly appreciated. Another time they went to a nursing home after school and went around and talked to all of the residents for a couple of hours. One Saturday morning everyone got up bright and early and volunteered at the Polar Plunge for six hours. On President’s Day no students had school and so the teen council planned a family fun day at the library. On a Friday night the teen council babysat the firefighters and police officers children for free to give them a “date night.”
All of these events took a lot of planning, commitment, and hard work. The teen council really had to work together to make these events be successful. They met every other Tuesday and brain stormed ideas of what they wanted to do. Then each person got assigned a job to do outside of the meeting. In the end each event turned out amazing and was well worth all of the time put into it.
Finally, the meeting came where Jamie announced who had been selected to attend the trip to Washington DC. Jessica was so anxious and nervous. The people selected were Hannah, Clare, and Jessica! Jessica could not have been any more thrilled. She got to go on an amazing trip with two really good friends she had just recently met. Now it was time to figure out all the details for the trip and to go shopping of course!
Jessica learned that they would be leaving right after school on a Friday and returning late at night the following Wednesday. They would be attending the leadership conference on Monday and Tuesday, but the rest of the days would be days to tour. Jamie told them she had reserved a tour of the White House, and along with that they would be going many other places. Jessica went shopping for clothes as soon as she could and immediately started a countdown of the days left until the trip.
When Jessica returned from the trip, she had so many great stories to tell. She learned many valuable skills that she would be able to benefit from for the rest of her life. A few examples are how to lobby, how to work with strangers, and how to balance work and fun when on a business trip. She did not have one negative thing to say about it and knew she had made so many amazing memories. Getting that note had opened up Jessica to so many amazing opportunities and she was so thankful for everything.