Daring to Role-model Excellence As Mentors. Dream Team, for short, is a student-led senior class at Myers Park where students strive to lead by example in the school and community. In addition to advocating for drug, alcohol, mental health, and safety awareness, the class works to give back to the community in a project-based, collaborative environment.
The Myers Park Dream Team has had incredible success in the past. Last year, the class prepared for the David Shannon game, held a homeless shelter supply drive, introduced freshmen to Myers Park ,and hosted Kindness week, Get Real About How You Feel week, the Prayers for Elijah Foundation Kickball game, and more!
The class is supervised by Ms. Wright, an English and Creative Writing teacher at Myers Park. According to current Dream Team member Eli Schmidly, “She’s very high energy…she keeps it fun…she helps everyone focus on what they have to do individually…but at the same time everyone is having fun and I think that starts with the environment that Ms. Wright creates.”
The Myers Park Dream Team has a variety of projects, activities, and fun events in store for this year. To kick things off, they participated in planning, setting up, and advocating for the David Shannon football game. On their Instagram, they explained that “David Shannon was an active Myers Park student in football and DECA. He graduated in 2012 and headed to UNC Chapel Hill. One night and one decision led to him falling to his death at a cement plant, after drinking and wandering out of a party alone.” With social media posts such as these, Dream Team encourages safe habits such as the buddy system, being aware of personal alcohol tolerance, and planning rides before drinking.
When asked about the preparations for the game, Eli explained Dream Team’s different committees: the logistics, marketing, and personal life committees.
With regards to the personal life committee, Eli said, “Personal life is four people who are talking to David Shannon’s dad and the family…figuring out the meaning they want to get across about David Shannon and little things about his life that are important to the story.”
Eli also explained how “The marketing committee is in charge of art, design, t-shirts, Instagram posts, and posters, so they’re pretty much creating the art stuff and designing that to get the word out there on Instagram.”
When discussing the logistics committee, Eli said, “They set up the financial need for t-shirts and figure out what we can and can’t buy for the game and who is going to do what on the day of the game to set things up…more of putting everything together.”
Collaboration is the key to success, and Eli notes that, “Sometimes those committees will have to work together…I think that’s one thing that’s cool about Dream Team in that regard is like sure you’re working on your individual projects but ultimately it’s all working towards one thing.”
Another component of Dream Team is that members follow a pledge to be drug, alcohol, and tobacco-free.
Eli notes that, “Ms. Wright really put it into good words for me when I joined when she told all of us: ‘we don’t want to be known for what we don’t do, but we want to be known for what we do, do,’ and I think that’s stuck with me a lot…we understand this could make a difference and we want to help out in any way we can.”
Through creativity, collaboration, and initiative, the Myers Park DREAM Team strives to lead by example in the Myers Park community and beyond.