The 2017 – 2018 Kilgore Leadership class, called E4, traveled to Kilgore Primary School as well as the high school Tuesday to view a series of classes, learning about what goes on inside the classrooms. The group viewed a health science class, a media class, a welding class and the robotics demonstration.

“This group is comprised of young community leaders that have committed to a leadership cohort through the Kilgore Chamber of Commerce,” superintendent Cara Cooke said. “They meet periodically to participate in different learning opportunities to develop their leadership skills. Today the focus was education in Kilgore. This morning they got to experience the KISD Way!”

E4 stands for embark, enlighten, empower, and engage. The class lasts a year long and meets once a month to learn about Kilgore’s community, history, school system and community college.

“We are learning about Kilgore and how to be better leaders and serve our community,” E4 member Stacy Cole said. “In October, we had an overnight retreat at Camp Gilmont and focused on team building.  In November, we focused on leadership skills, community service and volunteer work.  This month, the focus was on education so we visited KISD in the morning and KC in the afternoon. In the months to come we will focus on city government, creating a favorable business environment, county/state government, social services/healthcare, and we have a big project that we are working on and hope to unveil soon.”

The students in the classes were given the chance to take on the role of teacher and show the adults what all they had been learning throughout the year.

“It was interesting to be able to teach them about what we do everyday in class,” sophomore Mackenna Watkins said. “I enjoyed seeing them learn new information and skills, things we’ve been studying and want to do when we grow up.”

When the group met up in the game design room, the students quickly began to show them their games, how to play, and answered questions on how they pieced their work together. One adult from the leadership program was given the opportunity to experience virtual reality with help from senior Josh Fletcher.

“It was a fun experience to be able to show what we’ve been working on to people outside of our class,” Fletcher said.

In the health science class, the students were split into thirteen stations. In each station the students taught the group how to run tests such as drug tests from urine samples, drawing blood and more.

“It was a different experience for me because we were the ones explaining what to do,” sophomore Anushka Pradhan said. “They seemed to really enjoy what they were doing, and were interested in learning more about the program.”

Cooke brought Leadership Kilgore on their trip to the schools, serving as their supervisor. The group was given the chance to further leadership skills by taking part in what the students of Kilgore are doing, learning and experiencing.

“As your superintendent, I was very proud today to take these young community leaders throughout our district and show them the great things going on in our classrooms and beyond,” Cooke said.