My name is Marley and  I am a freshman at Pecos Cyber Academy. I have been in Evolvement for one year and joined my freshmen year. In this blog, I will write about my experience with a school board meeting and what I did to prepare myself for it and what I need to do next time when I go back to be more prepared.  I am hoping that this blog will help other students know what to do and what not to do.

The school board meeting had many opportunities for me. I was able to tell the board how they needed to update their policies and was able to earn more volunteer hours, which means that I am almost to the goal that I wanted to reach in Evolvement. Another goal I have is overcoming my fear of talking in public, which wasn’t hard, but scary. This board meeting helped in so many ways. I was able to talk in front of people who would understand the goals that I was setting to make Belen a better place for everyone, and for the future. I am not going to lie, I was so nervous to speak in public, especially seeing how many people I had to talk in front of. But everyone was so supportive and nice – the one thing that made me feel more comfortable was being able to do it with my sister. We were both feeling the same nerves but we were able to accomplish it together, which meant a lot. One thing that helped me prepare was to practice every day, but not to where I would overthink it. All you have to do is practice when you are doing something like watching a video. Do it for 3 minutes and then take a break then come back to it. I found that to help me a lot. I wasn’t overthinking it and I was confident in what I was saying.

This board meeting was important because I was able to make them see that they needed to update their policies so that the school could be tobacco-free. From this experience, I learned to be more confident in myself and believe that I can do anything. This benefited the campaign because I was able to highlight 24/7 and show them what we do. After attending the meeting, I learned that being nervous is ok but you have to believe in yourself for everyone else to. The changes that I hoped for happened because they updated their policies and were able to make the school tobacco-free. I hope that this helped my community be a little bit closer to being truly tobacco-free.

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