Mask Force

Four Timberlane seniors have been putting in long hours to make student voices heard over these past few stressful months. 

Maria Heim, Nen Horan, Hannah Collins, and Nick Matthews have been a part of the Timberlane task force entrusted with representing the community opinion on the return to school this fall. Their primary goal? To increase communication and bring awareness to student’s concerns.  

These students saw a need for increased transparency between the school board and students, and in a digestible format. To make this happen the group split in two. Maria Heim and Nen Horan talked to students about their concerns for the possibility of school in person; Hannah Collins and Nick Matthews talking to students about remote education. Calls were made, polls were put out, and the group used social media to allow students to ask questions. All of this data was taken directly to administration during their weekly meetings, where admin could directly answer, and students could get responses directly. 

Nen Horan, who also serves as the School Board Representative, noticed the student interest in school board and school politics had been increasing ever since the retirement of Mrs. Pajack. Her retirement sparked over 3,400 signatures on an online petition to address public concerns as to find a replacement for the position, rather than to leave the job unattended. This, combined with the switch to online school and the plans for what our fall return may look like, had the community paying attention. The group hoped to offer a voice to these questions and opinions.

Horan and Maria Heim, who also serves as Student Council President talked about the challenges of her role. Nen felt that, “It was hard to suppress my own emotions about things, but it was my job to say ‘this is what the general student population thinks’ and ‘there’s outliers that feel this way because of this or that’” and that she needed to make their voices known as well. Maria gains to help “foster a culture where we [the Timberlane community] overcome these challenging times together as a community” and to ensure that “communication runs rampant throughout all grades and all backgrounds and all students”. In the task force meetings Maria kept a “packet of responses and sentiments from different students next to me at all times and it was a good reminder that I’m not here for me. I’m here for all of us.” 

Heim and Horan together reached out to over 90 students from all different sectors of the school, to friends and strangers alike. Branding themselves as student leadership figureheads came with an unexpected weight. Maria often was the target of backlash and frustrated student opinions, and felt devastated when students would come to her asking “what had gone wrong” over controversial school board decisions. “I felt so discouraged, I worked so hard on this and it didn’t go completely to plan, and I didn’t want people to be upset with me. But when it started to turn around, people were in school and happy to be there, it made it worth it.” Working in depth with the task force, Hannah Collins felt conflicted at times, “It was a little nerve wracking at first; I was unsure if my opinion was valued.” but teachers had their backs, and “made sure our voices as students were heard.” 

Now, reflecting on seeing their hard work pay off as students return to school, Nick Matthews had a lot to appreciate. He noted the understanding nature of teachers and the commutative nature of classes, where students have often been helping teachers troubleshoot technological issues. Nick and Hannah are especially impressed with the group understanding of the importance of safety precautions on the field. Hannah stated that, “Everyone wants to play and is excited to get back on the field. We have to follow the rules if we want to play this season, and that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

So much work has been done to make the start of this school year a success. In the words of Maria, “Unprecedented times call for unprecedented things to happen, but this is how we start to work to care more for our community.”