Spotlighting Glen Lake student leaders
By Zinnia Dungjen
Sun contributor
Young leaders are more important now than ever before—in schools, in extracurricular groups, in sports, and in community service—as a changing climate, a global pandemic, and societal rifts pose ever more challenges for teenagers and young adults. We profiled five students at Glen Lake School who are rising to the challenge.
Rising sophomore: Ethan Verschaeve. Verschaeve is a bright young man who always lends a helping hand, no matter what the occasion may be—in school, at home, and around the community. He participates in 4H, which involves a lot of community service, and is also a member of the junior varsity baseball team. Verschaeve says it’s important to partake in community service and for student voices to be heard because, “this is all going to be our future, so it’s important that we take care of it now, so we’re not left with a huge mess five or 10 years later down the road.” Verschaeve is a perfect example, along with all of these other students, of how much youth want their voices heard in schools, communities, and the world. Not to mention, how they will go about amplifying their voices and opinions to create the world they want to see.
Rising sophomore: Peter Gelsinger. This year, Gelsinger took Glen Lake High School by storm. He joined the school’s baseball team and played for both Varsity and Junior Varsity. He was a leader in the classroom, and a student that peers could look to when they had a question or needed help. Gelsinger was always quick with a ‘good morning’ when you passed him in the halls, and had a confidence that is infectious. During the spring baseball season, Peter was hit in the face with a cleat, got a bloody lip, and broke a tooth. Not to mention the deal he made with the team that if somebody hit a homerun, he would shave his head in the locker room. (Gelsinger does in fact now have a mullet with the sides shaved: the home run was a huge deal!) Gelsinger is a 4.0 student and was on the honor roll, and volunteered with helping the elementary Pop Warner football team. Gelsinger says that being a part of the baseball team was a great learning opportunity and allowed for him to learn valuable life lessons and how to be a leader. He said he thinks younger people learning how to be leaders is really important because it teaches kids how to use their voices to speak up about other issues in the world, and helps them become better community members and later in life.
Rising junior: Riley Brown. Brown has attended Glen Lake for one year after transferring from Traverse City West for the second semester of her freshman year. Brown’s accomplishments and attitude are impressive and inspiring. This year, she started an organization in the school called “The Giving Closet,” which allows the school community to donate food, clothes, and other resources to the school. When students who cannot afford those resources at home need clothes or food, they can go to the room and take whatever they need. This is an act of community service and kindness that Brown worked for weeks on, so that her classmates and peers who need some extra help can get it. While maintaining her sports schedule and community service hours, Riley was also on the honor roll as a 4.0 student. She is a role model around the school too, as she participated in the Big Pals program at Glen Lake where high school students have the opportunity to apply and mentor an elementary student all year. She also helped out in the library after school for an hour every Tuesday and Thursday, tutoring many middle school and elementary school students. Brown believes her community service is important because being able to get food on the table is a growing concern for many families, especially with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. She said she hopes “The Giving Closet” and being a mentor for younger students brings awareness to struggling families in the community, and helps students’ home lives easier, and school less intimidating.
Rising junior: Jamie Blondia. Blondia does a great number of community services for the Glen Lake school community. He was the student director and an actor for the school musical in the fall, “A Year With Frog and Toad.” Blondia participated in the Big Pals program, was a member of Glen Lake’s Track and Field team, was a member of the National Honors society, and was also on the honor roll. Jamie believes it’s important for high school students and even younger kids to do community service for a number of reasons: to learn how to help your community around you, to be role models for the younger generation, and to grow student voices as they continue to have important things to say and stand up for.
Rising senior: Camille Moss. Moss this year participated in many programs at Glen Lake. She was in the first group to create the Tommy’s First Mates program. This is a peer-to-peer group that was created after the loss of Glen Lake senior Tommy Reay to suicide this previous summer. The group had six students involved: two freshmen, a sophomore, a junior (Moss), and two seniors. She believes that being a part of Tommy’s First Mates is incredibly important because it brings awareness to mental health, especially as suicide cases are rising and mental illnesses are becoming more and more common as COVID-19 impacts lives and societal changes pose for hurdles for teenagers. Moss also participates in Big Pals and helps tutor students after school. Moss says she thinks it’s important, especially attending a prosperous school, to help with community service. “Student voices are important, and they represent a very large amount of the population,” she said. Moss says she is participating in Tommy’s First Mates not for college applications or to be popular in school, but because it’s an important issue in our world today. To release the stigma surrounding mental illnesses, and to try and create a safer environment at Glen Lake, around our community, and in our world.
