Pics of the Week: "You're the Head Boy of our family"

In her 6-year-old way, Joyce has been keeping up with happenings of her older siblings, including Oak's selection as one of four boys in the final round of candidates for head boy at New Plymouth Boys' High School. In the kitchen one day, as Mike and I asked Oak about his prospects, Joyce gave her verdict. As if it was all that mattered, she told Oak, "You're the Head Boy of OUR family."

Oak has had two high school experiences lately that are very different than my own high school experiences: the selection process for student government and taking the ACT.

The selection process for student government started with an year-long leadership seminar option or boys in their junior year of high school. At the end of the year, 25 boys were invited by the faculty to a leadership camp. Camp was a mix between team-building and boot camp, and the boys were watched carefully by the headmaster and other teachers who attended. Boys who were interested in student leadership then submitted a lengthy written application. A few of the boys were then asked to give a speech to the entire school faculty and staff.

The final selection process was a 40-minute interview. Oak was interviewed at length by the headmaster and six other faculty members. They asked questions like "Who are you? In your speech you talked about your two older brothers, but who are you?" and "Are you ready to be head boy and how long have you been ready?"

The faculty also gave Oak some personal criticism. They told Oak that they noticed that he wore his sandal straps down, although they noticed that he'd "upped his game" the last couple of terms. (Oak responded by saying it was a bad habit, but it didn't reflect any negative attitudes he had toward the uniform policy at the school. He jokingly added that it would help him relate to the other boys, since almost everyone had problems meeting uniform code at one point or another.)

The faculty also told Oak that they'd noticed that he was either just on time or 1 minute late for his first class in the morning. (Oak said that he rides his bike to school so he gets to decide when to leave in the morning. If he arrives early, all the other boys are just on their phones waiting for the teacher, and he felt he could use his time more effectively at home, so he spends as much time there as he can.)

Oak was then asked to pick one of the faculty who were in the room and offer constructive criticism. (Oak picked a Mr. M - "I appreciate the total silence you get at assemblies; it feels great when we are totally unified. I would suggest that you work on relationships with boys outside of assembly so boys know you care.")

In addition to going through this high school selection process, Oak has also had the interesting experience of taking the ACT exam.

I heard all the details about Oak's ACT exam at the end-of-year Tiger Jacket awards dinner. Stories from Mr. Leath have been one of my favorite parts of the Tiger jacket awards dinner. Here's the one from Noah's year. Danny's year was memorable because Danny was picked as Performer of the Year.

This year, the dinner was memorable because of Mr. Leath's entertaining monologue about administering the ACT exam to Oak. Mr Leath had only administered the exam one other time, but the ACT exam board had instituted new security measures since then. For Oak's exam, the ACT board had sent a massive briefcase, similar to a fire-proof box, to Oak's school. Mr. Leath had to take a photo of the lock on the box, of the lock on the door of the room, and of the school security system. Each from multiple angles. All photos had to be sent back to the ACT board.

Mr Leath was already finding the situation hilarious and full of potential hacks, but if that wasn't bad enough, there was the additional security measure of two padlocks on the fireproof briefcase. The code for the two padlocks was to be sent from the USA to Mr Leath just minutes before Oak started the exam.

On Saturday morning, Oak arrived for the exam, the ACT sent the code....however, the code only opened one of the padlocks. So, Mr. Leath gets on the phone to the USA and spent half an hour waiting for several people to talk to their supervisors, but nobody could tell him how to open the other padlock. Finally one of them suggested that Mr Leath get his "maintenance engineer" to cut open the padlock. (Mr. Leath was splitting his sides at this point! "Maintenance engineer!!!" he kept saying.)

He walked to the office of another teacher who had one of those big chain-cutters in his office (?!) and seemed to find great satisfaction in using the giant hedge trimmer, or whatever it was, to personally bust into the fire-proof box (taking pictures before and after for the ACT board).

Oak got to start the exam 40 minutes late. Mr Leath got a funny story to tell about Americans, confirming several stereotypes about American, I'm afraid.

PS - Oak chosen as deputy head boy for 2018!!!