Castilleja held its first ever ACE demonstration in the Upper Gym Thursday. According to Castilleja’s Director of Leadership and Community Partnerships Becca Winslow, the goal of the event was twofold: to announce the new direction of the leadership portfolio, which will now be held on “social learning app” Unrulr; and to give the leads of Academic Enrichment Activities (AEAs) the opportunity to further introduce their work.
Winslow opened the event with an explanation of her decision to implement a leadership portfolio. “We talk a lot about turning young girls and young women into leaders,” she said. “But how do we do that?”
Winslow’s answer was the portfolio: a system to capture, measure and track student leadership. “I see so many incredible examples of leadership all the time. And I always think to myself, ‘Oh, I wish I had a camera,’” Winslow said. “What a leadership portfolio allows us to do is take that step back, really look at the big picture, and really celebrate the journey in that process.”
She announced the switch from the Formative reflections used last year to now posting on Unrulr, where students are encouraged to respond to prompts, post photos of their club activities and reply to each other. “Formative has a lot of really wonderful uses, and is a great platform, but I don’t think it was a portfolio tool,” said Winslow. “What Unrulr allows us to do is create a community of learners where students can constantly go back, iterate, revisit, and comment on themselves and others.”
After students were given a few minutes to explore Unrulr for themselves, Mock Trial kicked off the second half of the program by putting Joanne Zhao ‘24 on trial. The leads walked through standard competition procedures, including direct and cross-examination.
Castilleja’s Glee Club followed with a rendition of “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by the Eurythmics, Mia Ramirez ‘24 lit the inside of a water jug on fire on behalf of BLAST, and the Gatorbotics senior leads played videos featuring hours in the lab, footage of last year’s robot Zowski, and vlogs from previous competitions.
“I’m actually really happy that we got to show that video, because we got to show a side of Gatorbotics that people don’t usually see,” said Gatorbotics Build Lead Violet Pasmooij ‘24.
Mock Trial Lead Jillian Ascher ‘24 echoed the same sentiment, saying, “I’m appreciative of the time that we were given, and I think it was great for AEAs who couldn’t convey their mission through just a poster. As an ACE Org lead as well, I’m hopeful that Unrulr will be engaging and encouraging for members to share more.”
