2025 HSLP: Day 3

High School Leaders Program Class of 2025
Day 3: Monday, July 14th
Reported By: Ryne Bracknell (Ocean Lakes High School, Virginia Beach VA) and Rosalind Van Reken (Washington-Liberty High School, Arlington VA)

Today was the first day of classes for us at the HSLP, which began at 9:15 following breakfast at the O-Hill Dining Hall. After some minor difficulties getting into the building that our class was to be held in, we began with a lesson on ethics from Ms. Sarah Campbell. We first discussed the values that Americans, and Virginians more specifically, desire in a politician and
in the government as a whole—including our own opinions. This set the groundwork for the lesson on the values-tactics pyramid, and how ethics plays a role in political decision-making.

From there we learned what defines an ethical dilemma, what the types of dilemmas are, and the principles and steps of making ethical decisions. This was followed by a working lunch, in which we split into groups based on our regions to discuss what issues were addressed well in our local governments and which could be improved upon. We further expanded this to discuss issues in the Commonwealth as a whole, and compared our thoughts against that of the other groups. The issues we identified formed the
basis of our categories for the policy project, being education, healthcare, public health, public safety, energy/environment and affordable housing. Afterwards. Mrs. Meg Heubeck took over the class to discuss American values and leadership. We furthermore discussed the poem Paul Revere’ s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the role of a hero in society, particularly the fact that heroes are normal people that took initiative to solve a problem, thus distinguishing themselves. For the most part,
however, we particularly focused on the interaction between Native American and European societal structures. For this, she brought in a speaker, a tribal liaison to the University of Virginia to speak on the societies of several indigenous groups and how they influenced and were influenced by the European colonizers, and eventually the United States. The students were highly attentive to the lesson, considering we were all relatively oblivious to native American power and governmental structure. We began reading and discussing several articles on American values, but came to the end of the day to continue our conversation tomorrow. The day ended with another meal, and ice cream, at O-Hill.