Leadership is an excellent class if you are interested in bettering yourself, helping those around you, and learning about yourself and your classmates. In class, you learn things like being a leader and what that truly means, how to pick up on different social cues, how to better your existing relationships and how to spark new ones, and you learn how to make the learning environment better for you and for your teachers.

Lauren Tyner’s favorite part of the class is “learning about different types of love, other than romantic,” she said “(learning this) helped me realize I can love things and people without it being romantic and/or sexual.” Many students, like Tyner, learn new things about themselves and about their peers.

To Ballew “leadership’s job is to identify the needs and create projects to meet those needs, (to help) try to create community,” he said when asked what exactly does leadership do. He defined leadership as “a skill , not necessarily being able to talk on a microphone. (It’s) learning about yourself and (learning) about relationships; how to build on them.” Ballew always tells students, “all of life is relational.”

Not only does the class plan lunchtime activities such as One Mic Stand, Stop Ballew From Singing, and the games similar to that of The Tonight Show, they also help with presentations at lunches, plan send offs for sports, and get almost all the assemblies ready.

If you’re searching for an elective, leadership might just be the class for you. Many high schoolers are still learning things about themselves, so going into a class like this with an open mind may be a way for you and other students to learn more about themselves.