L.E.A.D. (Leadership, Empowerment, Advocacy, Development)

My high school, Gray Stone Day School, is a charter school located in rural, Stanly County, North Carolina. As a charter school we pull students from various surrounding counties and have quite an eclectic group of students. Gray Stone focuses on being a college prepatory high school and pushes students through a more rigorous class schedule. However, as I learned personally through my own freshman year at the school, the transition between middle school to high school is rough; but the transitition from major public schools in the area, to a more challenging school is very difficult. It's not only the adademic elements that make Gray Stone Day School hard to adjust to, it's the fact that students frequently come on the very first day and there's not a familiar face walking the halls; students come to the school, and thier classmates all live in different neighborhoods, which are miles from one another. Since our school is small, new, and still developing we lack as strong guidence department, so I took a stand and developed a program that made up for this lack.