The NorthStar Narrative
The NorthStar Narrative
The Art of Balancing School and Passion
Step into the vibrant world of student leadership with NorthStar Academy's own Isabelle Phillips and Hallie Griffin, whose remarkable stories promise to inspire and educate. Join us as Isabelle, the Student Council content creator, and Hallie, the ad coordinator, share their unique experiences from an international online school setting. They offer a window into how they balance an array of responsibilities—from student council duties to personal passions like Isabelle's emerging cookie business—while forming meaningful connections with peers across diverse cultures. This episode is packed with valuable insights into how these experiences have shaped their understanding of the world and honed their leadership skills.
Hi, this is Stephanie Schaefer and you're listening to the North Star Narrative, a podcast from North Star Academy. I want to thank you for joining us. I hope you're encouraged, challenged and motivated by what you learned today. Enjoy the story. Hey everybody, thanks for joining us on this episode. We've got another episode with a couple of our student council members here at Northstar, and it's always a delight when we have them joining us to tell us a little bit about what's happening at Northstar and what they're learning. And each of these girls are very creative and have so many cool things. I'd love to talk about them all, but we don't have time to do that, so we're going to stay focused a little bit on leadership and how they're learning that. How do they juggle their time with North Star and leadership and all the different stuff they've got going on in their lives. So we have Isabel with us today and Hallie with us today. Thank you, ladies, so much for joining us.
Speaker 2:Of course, excited to be here. Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Yes, so glad you're here. Okay, let's take a moment for each of you to introduce yourself. Tell us your role on student council and maybe how long you've been at Northstar and anything about. I know y'all got some siblings and you've got lots of stuff your own business and just lots of things going on. So tell us a little bit about you. Isabel, you want to go first?
Speaker 2:Sure so, isabel Phillips, I am the Stukco content creator. This is my second year at Northstar. I live in West Africa with my family. We're serving here in Niger and I have three younger brothers and am currently starting my own cookie business. And am currently starting my own cookie business.
Speaker 3:My name is Hallie Griffin. This is my third year here at Northstar and I am the ad coordinator. I have eight younger siblings, but only two of them are doing Northstar right now and I don't do any businesses.
Speaker 1:But you're quite active on Northstar and have been for a while, so I love, I love that that you are so well-rounded and doing so many things. Like most all of our Northstar students, it's always a privilege to have you on and, yeah, just getting to serve here with you. Thank you so much for your investment in Northstar and our community and our students, and I'm excited to hear what you've been learning through, yeah, being able to do so many cool things online, and so I always like to share our students' experience for people that might be listening and they're like how do you do this stuff online? What does this look like? Do you mean you're really real people? And so tell us a little bit about? Think about, if you didn't know anything about online school or Northstar, what would you want other families and students to know?
Speaker 3:It's really fun. You could think that it would be really lame and boring or you would kind of make superficial friendships that wouldn't really last like is on a lot of like video games. But it's not even comparable to making friends on video games. Um, it's very real and you see people's faces and everyone really can get to know each other. So we do, uh, interacting in the courtyard with lots of different threads about all sorts of random topics, and we can have group chats for different very niche interests and we do a lot of video calls and stuff and it's very engaging and fun if you decide to get involved.
Speaker 2:I completely agree. I would highly recommend it to anyone and I feel like it's helped me prepare myself for the real world. Through North Star you just meet people from different cultures to learn how to interact with someone who might come from a very different background. And everyone's fine in the courtyard, especially if you get there. You can get connected with the community and I would totally recommend it to anyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how many times have you met someone that's been on a different continent than you? A bajillion times. It's so awesome. That's one of the things I love the most is that we are truly an international school. We are global, so tell me a little bit about what it's like. I mean, right here, we're on different continents. In this call we've only got three people, and so what's it like getting to learn about different peoples whether it's time zones, their culture, just different lives, and how each person is so uniquely gifted and called to do different things?
Speaker 3:I've really appreciated it. It's given me a lot of different role models and examples for ways to be more like Christ, and it's also helped me just learn a lot about the world. I, unfortunately, when I came to NSA, was kind of like a stereotypical homeschooled American who has no idea what the rest of the world is like, and so I've learned a lot about other countries and cultures and got rid of the stereotypes that are in my mind, and it's been really cool and interesting to learn about everything in different places.
Speaker 2:As an MK, I've gotten to learn more. I've always heard about all these experiences and cultures across the world and through Northstar I've been able to talk to people who firsthand live in these religions and cultures, and so I have loved it getting to have conversations, sometimes even if we don't agree, just hearing their perspective and their thoughts and their upbringings. And you can meet the most diverse people through Northstar, and I love just hearing their stories about their religions, comparing it to my experience and my religion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so good that you both get exposed to that. And, yeah, while you're in high school, while our kids are in middle school, you know even elementary and how that is shaping students' lives and views on the world. So I love that. How do you balance school with serving on STUCO and with life in general?
Speaker 2:That was a very hard thing for me when I first joined on STUCO. I'm also taking college classes and I wanted to make sure it's my last two years here in my home to spend time with my family, to make sure it's my last two years here in my home to spend time with my family, and so I have had to have a lot of errors in my learning experience. But I decided to do certain boundaries where I would focus on schooling and then one day where I could focus on STUCO extracurricular activities, and then the weekends I would close off teams, say this is my family, it's time with me.
Speaker 3:For me. I have tried to kind of put a set cutoff time for when I'm doing student council work. So at 12 in my time I say, okay, I'm going to be done with any student council work, I'm just going to focus on school, unless there's something urgent that someone texts me about.
Speaker 1:Yeah that's good. It sounds like you're learning to put good boundaries in your life, which is so important for us to do at any age. So it's so cool that you're learning that. Now I've got this little sticky note on my computer. I want to ask you about because I've been challenging our staff to make sure they're taking breaks throughout the day whether that is going to grab some water, lunch, going to the restroom, going to take a walk, like sometimes we get so busy in our stuff that we just don't take a break, we forget. So how important is it to take breaks when you're doing school and you're sitting at a computer all day?
Speaker 3:I think it's really important. I find that if I don't take a break, I end up not being able to focus at all, and so if I notice I'm starting to have a hard time focusing, I'll just take a break and I'll go get a snack or go get some water or just wander around and see what my family's doing for a couple minutes before I come back and continue.
Speaker 2:I agree. I cannot stress how important breaks are. Just, we're humans and so when we're working we're going to need to take breaks. Give our brain the time to just stop working, pull on, and so I think, just like maybe an hour or so, and then get up, walk around, go get water and just do something, just allowing your brain to rest for a few minutes, because you're staring at a computer screen, which already is not the best.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so true. Okay, so thinking about your roles on student council, creating ad content, making sure our community knows what's going on, your role is super important in our communication. So how do breaks affect that? What do we need in order to be able to have that creativity and keep it flowing?
Speaker 2:I find for me, my creativity is always flowing if I'm not in my school room where I'll work, and so if I've worked half a day I will take a break, and then, once during that break, I'll move locations just to be in a new area, and that's when I'll work on stucco stuff, just to give my brain a new environment, which always, for me, helps me reset and know what and focus on something else besides school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. I love to jump out and take a walk, especially if it's a really pretty day. What about you, Hallie? Anything to add to that?
Speaker 3:Not really. I had thought about breaks helping creativity. I just try and get excited and then that helps me write in a way that hopefully will get other people excited too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. Collaboration is important at North Star. How do you see that among the students?
Speaker 3:In student council. I don't see as much of the other teams doing stuff because we're not on that team, but Isabelle and I will communicate a lot about what's going on. If there's stuff that's needing to be made, we'll talk about who's going to work on that or if either of us need any help, which I've really appreciated, and I know a lot of other people do collaboration as well. I just don't see as much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, teamwork is so important and being intentional just to meet and build that community. What's the hardest thing, what's a challenge with your role or what's something that you've really learned about leadership in your role?
Speaker 2:I learned how to say no. That was really hard for me. I would get a lot of posters and I knew that I would not be able to do it well and so learning to say no or to say I need help. So Hallie's been amazing where I could just go to her and tell her I need help and she could take something off my plate. So that aspect of leadership not always doing everything, but allowing other people to support me and help me- For me.
Speaker 3:The biggest thing that I have learned is that sometimes I just need to do something. When I first joined, I was really scared to do anything without express direction and you have to do this right now because I didn't want to make a mistake and mess up. But I've slowly become more comfortable with oh, I was told I need to do this at some point, and I don't always have to check everything by someone else before I do it. I just need to do it and if there's a mistake they can tell me and I can fix it.
Speaker 1:That's good, yep, sometimes you have to just jump out there and try things. So I love that yeah, both of yours answers and how you're growing, because we can't say yes to everything in life. Right, that's super hard, but having that wisdom and then having a great friend like y'all have to help, help each other, say I need help in all kinds of things. Where do you see Jesus in our school?
Speaker 2:I personally see him the most in the big buildings where students are interacting. You'll see all kinds of conversations and I just see Jesus's love um he's put in us for other people, the way people can encourage each other and support each other, even if it's through messages, um just every single conversation where you have Christian students sometimes non-Christian students just interacting. You see how diverse we are and Jesus created us like them.
Speaker 3:I see it in the girls community group a lot. Actually, everyone's really supportive and loving towards each other. When someone shares a prayer request, everyone is praying. And I'm not sure with every circumstance, but I know when I've shared a prayer request I always have multiple people who reach out to me and say they're praying for me or ask if there's any way they can support me. And I just see Jesus can't be here physically with us, but he can use his people to do what he would.
Speaker 1:That's so good. Yeah, it's so fun to have the global aspect, to know that God has brought us here all together and just to see him working, and I love both of your hearts. In the surveys before you came on that, you filled out that you really have a heart to share, to share him with other students, Because we have all different types of students that come from all backgrounds, like we've said, and that's amazing to get to learn from each other and challenge one another. How do you think God's used you most here at Northstar?
Speaker 2:Me personally. I've had some friends I've made where they were struggling through a really hard time and I was able to support them and share my own experiences, and then, in little ways, where if I say something and people will message me privately and say you have no idea how much that helped me, or I really needed this today. And so that's how I see God using me just to be a friend, support others and to build others up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm not sure how perfectly I've done this no one's perfect, of course but I try really hard to just support my friends. Um like with school, everyone has a hard time with school, and so I always try to be encouraging and just be friendly towards people. So that's probably the biggest way I've helped.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that people get to hear your hearts right now and just the hearts that you have for friendship, for loving on people, and my prayer is that all students would see that, would feel that we want every student to be known and loved and heard, and so I know y'all play a big role in helping that happen, as well as the rest of our STUCO and so many other students.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much for doing that and just being involved in the community and for sharing today that we do have a community, for sharing today that we do have a community. It's so hard to tell the story of North Star for those that have never done online school or just can't imagine. You know, because unless you're a part of North Star, you really can't imagine right or get a good picture. So I've been trying to figure out how do we tell the North Star story in just a few moments. You know that someone will listen or watch a video. So how would you, how would you recommend to me to tell the story? Like if you just had 30 seconds or a minute or two to make a commercial, like, what would we say? How do we? It's so hard, how do?
Speaker 3:I think you could find a lot of people who would give the testament of. I made a lot of friends here. I know when I first came to North Star I had friends in person at my church, but I didn't really feel like I fit in with them as well. And then I joined NSA and I was like, oh my word, these are my people. These people get me and when I'm socially awkward, awkward, they understand that they are socially awkward sometimes too, and they will forgive me for that I agree with how he said it.
Speaker 2:There's so many parts of north star and so many wonderful aspects, but I do think that real life stories would be amazing just hearing so many people. When I first joined north star, that's what I've looked for hearing people's stories of saying how much north star helped them, shaped them as who they are, as a believer and a person.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's good. We do have so many stories and I know we've been able to capture just a glimpse of those stories. There's so many more. Some of them I hear about, some of them the teachers hear about. Some of them we never, probably ever, hear about, and so capturing those stories, so we've gotten to capture a little bit of your story not all of it. I know you've got much bigger and longer stories, but I just wanted everyone our listeners to hear about a little bit about your experience at Northstar and what you're learning and so thankful that you're growing in your leadership every day and just live that out here. Thank you for sharing Christ, for loving people in and outside North Star, for the good work you are doing. Yeah, is there anything else that you want to share about Stucco, about what you're learning? As people might be in North Star listening to this or outside thinking, do I want to come to Northstar?
Speaker 2:I think just to everyone who's listening be involved. Don't be scared to reach out to people. It's going to be scary at first it always is but it's worth it. That's a promise I can make.
Speaker 3:One thing I'd say is student councils are still just students and we just love and care about all the students, the school, and so we're just trying to help and do the best we can to make it an awesome experience for everyone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and y'all are all doing a great job and just thank you. Thank you so so much and for coming on today for sharing a little bit about your story and what God is doing at North Star. It's always an exciting place, always evolving and growing and just getting to work together. So I pray you have a great day, great rest of the week and just thank you so much, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening today. If you have any questions for our guest or like information about Northstar, please email us. At podcast at NSA dot school, we love having guests on our show and getting to hear their stories. If you have anyone in mind that you think would be a great guest to feature to hear their stories, if you have anyone in mind that you think would be a great guest to feature, please email us and let us know. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss out on upcoming stories.