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Photos courtesy of Kym Prewitt.
Vestavia Hills Youth Leadership in 2012.
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Photos courtesy of Kym Prewitt.
Vestavia Hills Youth Leadership at an elementary school in 2017.
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Photos courtesy of Kym Prewitt.
Vestavia Hills Youth Leadership in 2022.
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Photos courtesy of Kym Prewitt.
Vestavia Hills Youth Leadership in 2011.
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Photos courtesy of Kym Prewitt.
Vestavia Hills Youth Leadership in 2011.
This year marks a special anniversary for Youth Leadership Vestavia.
The program has been a passion for Kym Prewitt, Youth Leadership Vestavia’s teacher and sponsor, and many others who have worked to build the program. Twenty years ago, a Leadership Vestavia Hills team began establishing the youth version of the program.
Organizers, including Prewitt, Garry Atkins, Kelly Bottcher, Cindy Brown, Bryan Gunn, Ann Jones and Sally Young, quickly realized that Vestavia Hills High School needed something a little different to meet the needs of a student body growing in enrollment and diversity.
“It’s all about connecting and making our community a better place,” Prewitt said.
The team aimed for a leadership program to help students build better relationships by intentionally connecting with one another and discover and engage their leadership skills. Part of the premise of Youth Leadership Vestavia Hills is the belief that every student is a leader in some way to someone.
The youth leadership program has been so successful it is now part of the high school’s curriculum — a curriculum that Prewitt helped develop.
Prewitt said they wanted the program to include as many students as possible because leadership is more about relationships than positions, titles or power.
“The kids are the ones who make a difference for the school as a whole, but, more importantly, they make a difference one student at a time, which is very much needed,” Prewitt said.
The program has expanded from 40 students in its first year to now averaging 200+ students participating each year. To date, around 4,241 students have participated.
Like their adult counterparts in Leadership Vestavia, Youth Leadership students cultivate new ideas and projects each year. One of the highlights of the projects and programs that have come out of Youth Leadership Vestavia Hills is the award-winning Vestavia Student Life App in 2017 — the first of its kind in public schools at the time. The app allows users to access many aspects of student life, like grades, meal menus, game times and scores, official school social media feeds and more.
Sloen Zieverink Johnston, who graduated in 2018, remembers how her Youth Leadership class came up with the idea. “We saw a gap in the life of students and their connection to school spirit. We wanted a way to fill that,” she said.
At the time, there was no vehicle for communication to students that really “spoke” to them about the things that mattered in their school life from bell to bell, Johnston said, and “websites were not where kids were going to find out what the theme of Friday’s pep rally was going to be.”
The precursor to the app was a school spirit GroupMe, a group chat app. “We started there first, sent the GroupMe around and tested it to see if people wanted to join, and it was blowing up. We saw the interest was there for better communication with students,” Johnston said. “We put our plan together and presented it to the board of education. I was so nervous, but they smiled and said, ‘What is the next step?’”
The app was developed over the summer and launched in the fall, receiving the Catalyst Award for Community Engagement from BlackBoard, Inc., an educational technology company. Johnston, along with Prewitt and fellow student Lucy Ankenbrandt, were chosen by BlackBoard to make a presentation and receive the award for the school at the NSPRA convention in Los Angeles.
Now a graduate of Auburn University with a degree in public relations, Johnston credits her journey through Youth Leadership with preparing her for the future. “The Youth Leadership II class was probably the most life-preparing class I have had, even compared to college classes. We learned to refine skills, work with others and have professional and personal development,” she said.
She also said students felt heard in the class. “As seniors, we almost served like a focus group for the school and the community. It made us realize that our opinions and voices mattered,” Johnston said.
Along with projects like the app, Youth Leadership students serve in many ways. For example, each year, they are also paired with new students so they can get to know their new school. Through the New Student Committee, Youth Leadership Vestavia Hills students show new students around the school, answer questions and help to make them feel at home. The leaders also keep in touch as the school year progresses.
“In my 14 years at Vestavia Hills High School, I have witnessed the impact that Youth Leadership has had on hundreds of students, including my two children [James, ‘18, and Ella, ‘21],” said Mary Virginia Sweeney, a teacher and Youth Leadership sponsor. “The program creates a culture of kindness and service, all while helping students find their place and develop leadership skills.”
The students also reach out to middle and elementary school students through mentoring, anti-bullying panels and shared experiences.
RISE — Rebels Impact Service and Engagement — is Youth Leadership’s largest community-wide fundraising event for local charities. In 2019 students revamped their Relay for Life fundraising for the American Cancer Society to a more local focus, supporting UAB’s O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center and other charities. It is a massive undertaking through student teams and RISE committees.
There are 300 committee positions to organize the event, and more than half the student body participates on RISE teams throughout the semester to raise funds and create awareness through service.
Other events under the RISE umbrella include the Rebel Run, the Princess and Super Hero Meet & Greet and the Sadie Hawkins dance.
“It really is amazing and kind of crazy to think of all the work that goes into this and the fact that high schoolers spend a semester on the planning and preparation,” Johnston said. “At Auburn, people would be shocked when I would share the number of donations the program took in for the cause.”
Retirement
This year’s anniversary also marks a period of transition. Prewitt is passing the baton to her trusted fellow teachers, Morgan Jones and Mary Virginia Sweeney, as she looks to a new chapter in her life.
Jones and Sweeney are no strangers to the program. This will be Jones’s 10th year at Vestavia Hills High School and second year working with Youth Leadership Vestavia Hills. “I learned so much this past year working with Kym Prewitt. Before moving into this role, I volunteered with Youth Leadership Vestavia Hills as a faculty facilitator for retreats, a RISE team faculty member, and oversaw the RISE accounting committee,” Jones said.
Sweeney, who is starting her 15th year at the high school, has served as the New Student committee faculty sponsor and volunteered at RISE and many Youth Leadership Vestavia Hills training retreats as a faculty facilitator. “These retreats offered me an inside glimpse at the power and potential of Youth Leadership at Vestavia Hills High School, and it has always been a hope of mine to become more deeply involved in this tremendous program,” she said.
The upcoming school year
Jones and Sweeney say this fall, Leadership I & II students will lead retreats as they do each year for all students at the Freshman Campus. The goal of these retreats is for students to get to know one another and be the difference in a positive way for others.
Sweeney will also teach the high school’s Youth Leadership Level 1 and Level 2 classes.
During RISE season, they will have the Sadie Hawkins dance, Rebel Run and the Superhero Fun Run,
The sponsors say they hope to continue seeing the program grow and want students to know they have a place in Youth Leadership.
Jones and Sweeney both said Prewitt’s legacy at Vestavia Hills High School is the Youth Leadership program, and they are honored to be part of its future and benefit from the sage wisdom and wonderful friendship that Prewitt will continue to share with the program.
