Meet Liza – a grade 12 Youth Leader from Newtonbrook Secondary School. Liza has been a Youth Leader for two years, gaining a variety of leadership experience in this time. This school year, once a week, Liza and four other Youth Leaders would spend their morning leading learning-focused games with kindergarten students at nearby R.J. Lang Elementary and Middle School. “We would do the games, and then we would talk about them afterwards…So for example, [if] both games would revolve around communication, then we would talk about why communication is important and what it means,” Liza explains.

Last year, in grade 11, Liza participated in Youth To Youth through Newtonbrook’s Specialist High Skills Majors (SHSM) program, and led games for students in grades 5 and 6 at Pleasant Public School. This year, having to adapt the program for kindergartners was a challenge, she confesses. “It was a bit hard for the kindergartners because it’s kind of difficult to teach them a message.” But over time, the relationships built between the kindergartners and Youth Leaders led to more learning. “After going for a couple times you could tell that the students really had a connection with the Leaders and I felt like our messages came across clearer,” Liza explains. She also shares that using play as a method of teaching and learning is unlike anything else. “We don’t get to learn like this necessarily in the classroom so when opportunities like this present themselves, it’s amazing…Using a more ‘hands-on’ approach and going out and leading a group of people is different than learning how to do so in a classroom scenario.”

The kindergartners were not the only ones learning and developing skills through this program – so were the Youth Leaders themselves. “The idea of [the Youth To Youth program] is to teach other people lessons but they [also] teach you lessons as a person. They teach you self-control,” she joked, making reference to the early mornings of programming, “[and] I learned a variety of communication skills…the two most important [being] the ability to listen and non-verbal communication.”

Liza’s Program Mentor, Jennifer Fox, was also happy to share about Liza and the ways in which the skills she developed helped to shape her as a role model even among her fellow Youth Leaders. “I’ve had the pleasure of teaching Liza since grade 9. [She] has done an incredible amount of growing since [then]...When the opportunity presented itself to be part of Right To Play while she was a grade 11 SHSM student, she took it”. This experience in grade 11 and her “aptitude for care and concern for other people and the desire to help them” was carried into the grade 12 Recreation and Fitness Leadership course: “She [brought] to the table some experience, and therefore her peers allowed her to mentor them through the process as well. Liza [took] the lead when needed […] but they each did take turns to step up and facilitate…I want to commend her for continuing to put herself out there as a leader.”

Thinking about life beyond grade 12, Liza says “as a graduating student, I hope to have the opportunity to meet various new people at my campus and make lifelong friendships, [and] in a more practical situation, many jobs look for a plethora of communication skills. These skills are important anywhere [and] come in handy in any situation.” Reflecting on her growth over the last two years, Liza shares, “I’m a very nervous speaker in front of new things. I remember walking towards my first Right To Play [program] and I didn’t know how it would go. But it went really well, and that raised my confidence in doing things like these. [Youth To Youth] teaches you a lot about yourself. It teaches you when you don’t expect it to.”