Sophomores Mirabelle Chernick, Maia Hito and Jade Ajileye earned spots in a local all-expenses paid leadership camp where they hope to bring

back new skills to help them improve the school.

“I hope that I get the leadership skills to hopefully open up more clubs here in schools so that the students have more opportunities,” Ajileye said.

The Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA) is a selective recognition seeing as only 200 students in the Los Angeles area can receive it. The sophomore students will be going to a weekend-long leadership camp in the San Bernardino mountains the last weekend in April. The camp will help students expand their leadership skills through workshops, presentations and activities.

“We wrote an essay and sent it to the Rotary Club. We had to write about why we want to go and what we would bring back to school,” Chernick said.

The three students took this as an opportunity to add on to their resumes as well as help improve the school. They heard about the leadership camp through the Interact Club sponsored by math teacher Daniel Cramer. Cramer has had students apply and attend to this camp in previous years as he believes it’s a great opportunity for the students.

“I want to be the Interact Club president next year so this will be a great opportunity to get involved,” Ajileye said.

As part of the application, the students had to submit a brief one to two page essay describing how the camp would be beneficial to them and how they would benefit their school.

“I wrote about what good of an experience I would have there and how the leadership skills I’d learn will help me later on in life,” Ajileye said.

The camp will be full of students from all around Los Angeles so the three students will definitely be exposed to new levels of socialization. The students are excited for the camp not only for the social aspect but also because they get to be in a different environment than what they’re used to for three days.

“I hope that I have a good time and it’ll be a good learning experience,” Ajileye said.