Holy Family School’s tagline is: DREAM, BELIEVE, ACHIEVE and LEAD. Teaching students to LEAD is something that you just can’t learn out of a book. Students need experiences and opportunities to understand what it means to become a good leader. Student Council and Justice League are a few areas at Holy Family School, where students have those opportunities.

Holy Family Student Council is comprised of members from grades 5-8. In September, students campaign with posters for the hallway and short speeches for their homeroom. Each homeroom elects their representatives and the council is inducted for their year of service in a special ceremony at school mass. At HFS, the student council has three areas of focus: HF community building, service outreach, and fundraising.

At the beginning of the year, Student Council focuses on raising money which they will need for the year to help offset operational costs. Some of the students favorite fundraising events are the “Dirt and Worm” sale at lunch, Hot Chocolate Café, and the Halloween Bake Sale.

The second area of focus is service outreach. Service outreaches educate and engage the entire school population about a need in the larger community. This year, SC partnered with the MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary, a shelter-in-progress working in the most impoverished neighborhood in Milwaukee. SC collected 90 blankets, delivered the donation, and had a tour of the sanctuary. They also organized the making of 100 bag lunches with happy note greetings inside.

And the third area is community building. Community building involves energizing the Holy Family student body with pep rallies and other fun events. They host the annual Halloween Parade and organize many of the Catholic Schools Week activities. In recent years, they have conducted “Minute to Win It” and “What would you do for a Klondike Bar?” games. They end the year with a fun communitywide event like a school-wide scavenger hunt. Each of these events are planned and organized by the student council members with support from their advisors, Jill and Steven Haberman.

“Our lunch hour meetings can get pretty noisy and messy, but their enthusiasm is amazing as they learn team-building, organizing, and troubleshooting skills through their projects.” Jill and Steven comment. “We appreciate the council’s dedication because we meet nearly every Tuesday during lunch/recess, so students are giving up their social time to be involved.”
Another area that Holy Family sees its student become leaders is through the Justice League Program. Each week, 8th graders give up a study period to perform service around the school and parish.

HFS Faith Formation Coordinator, Shannon Matheis, started the Justice League Program 10 years ago. Then principal, Angela Little, wanted a service type project for the 8th graders to do. Not 100% sure what that meant, she asked Shannon, who at that time was the 7th and 8th grade Lit and Religion teacher, to create something Shannon’s answer to Angela’s request was the Justice League. It was a scheduled time during the school day in which the 8th graders did service within Holy Family. During the first year of Justice League, the 8th graders created the name and logo for the t-shirts that are still used today. “Justice League became a place for peer mentoring opportunities and a place for the 8th grade class to have a culminating experience before graduation and moving on to high school.” explains Shannon. “It also offered each 8th grade class an opportunity to leave its mark upon the school by meeting special needs that the school might have needed that year.”Currently, Jill and Steve Haberman run the Justice League Program.

“I really like both of these leadership opportunities.” says parent of a student who is on both student council and Justice League. “The students love the chance to make decisions, try to think of new things to do, and be role models for the younger students, all while remembering their faith.”

“If we want to create the leaders of tomorrow, there is no better time to develop our students as leaders of today.” –unknown