To Mrs. Meredith Espina, the words faith, service, and leadership in the Gibbons mission statement stand out.
“Mission Day is a new event created to celebrate the mission of Cardinal Gibbons High School,” said Espina
On Thursday, April 30, groups, clubs, and leadership teams will host Gibbons’ first-ever Mission Day.
“The whole idea behind Mission Day was finding a way to celebrate things we already do at school and draw more attention to them,” said Espina
Throughout the day, starting as soon as students arrive, events will include a pancake breakfast, GLI poster presentations, and temporary tattoos on the green. The day will be filled with the Gibbons community coming together through our values of faith, service, and leadership.
Origin
The whole idea began over a year ago with Espina and Ms. Paige Derouin desiring a day where students and faculty could come together and celebrate the success of the community. After discussing the potential of Mission Day, they officially pitched it to GLI this January.
Gibbons Leadership Institution, or GLI, a group of students driven to lead and represent the school, was allowed to be a large part of Mission Day.
GLI students met, planned, and discussed areas in the school that were open for improvement. These areas included spiritual life, community, service, advisory, athletics, academics, and leadership.
“It’s like making a dream into a reality, just seeing it all come together has been awesome,” said GLI Mission Day leader Milo Mika.
Once the idea was set in stone, marketing leaders of GLI began to invite other clubs and leadership groups, like the student council.
Together, these groups created a day of celebrating everything that built it.
And while this day on the outside may look effortless to the student and educator leaders, they actually learned lots along the way.
“I’ve grown in my organizational skills because of my part in planning it with GNN, slides, and presentations,” said Mika, explaining his growth.
Students took this opportunity to expand the fundamental values of planning, organizing, communicating, and considering when making tedious decisions.
Coming together to form one goal, Mika says it best: “Just basically growing to be the people God needs us to be.”
