A Learning Lesson

Lia came home the other week from school bursting with excitement about wanting to run for her school's student council.  Since she is finally in 5th grade, Lia is now old enough to run for the position of secretary/treasurer which is a shared position for two 5th or 6th graders where as president and vice president are set aside just for 6th graders.  Like most things offered at school, Lia always gets super excited and wants to be involved.  As happy as I was to hear about this, I was also a little nervous as I knew that the chances of her losing and getting her feelings hurt were very real.  I agreed to help Lia with this endeavor on the the condition that she would be able to handle the disappointment of losing if it happened to which she agreed.
So, over the next week, we put in quite a few hours preparing for this election.  Ron spent an entire Sunday afternoon with Lia helping her type up her election speech.  Lia then had to meet with the rest of the students running for the student council positions and give her speech in front of a panel of 4th, 5th, and 6th grade teachers.  Only five students were selected for the position of secretary/treasurer to move on and Lia found out by the end of the day that she was one of them!  She came home so thrilled about the good news.  We then had three days to put together six election posters to hang around the school.  After ordering pictures of her to be developed at Costco and picking up some supplies at Michaels, Lia and I spent four hours this past Sunday with a friend of mine from church (who owns a vinyl-cutting machine) making her posters.  My friend cut out the vinyl, I laid it down on her posters along with the pictures, and Lia decorated all of them with gems and glitter glue.  It was quite the production, but we managed to finish before dinner time!  Lia, Logan, and I then went to school 30 minutes early on Monday morning to hang up her posters in the designated areas of the school.  Needless to say, I walked out of school afterwards a little worn out by all of this. 
Lia then practiced her speech every night for the rest of the week in preparation for the election assembly that was held this morning in her school's gymnasium in front of all of the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade classes.  After dropping the kids off at school and then Ella at preschool, I drove back down to the school where I checked Logan out of class to join me for the 10 o'clock assembly.  I simply could not get over how brave Lia was to do all of this.  I never would have had the courage or confidence to do this sort of thing in the 5th grade.  Luckily, the candidates for secretary/treasurer went first in the assembly and Lia was #3 out of #5.  She did such a great job--reading her speech with poise and confidence while making plenty of eye contact with the audience.  She really has a gift for public speaking and would make such a great, student leader.  After all five candidates had given their speeches, Logan and I slipped out of the assembly since he was anxious to get back to reading time.  I then went on with my day wondering about the results of the election as the students had been promised that they would find out by the end of the day.  After the all of the upper grades had been given the chance to vote in class, Lia and the other candidates were pulled out of class where they learned of the results privately from the teacher in charge of the elections before the winners were announced over the intercom to the entire school.  Sadly, Lia was not one of the two candidates who won the position she ran for and she was devastated.  Ironically, she was beat by her two close friends who had also advanced to the 'top 5.'  Needless to say, it was a painful loss and Lia would not be happy to know that I devoted a blog post to this painful event in her life.  But, after the dust settles and her heart heals, I hope that Lia can see what a great job she did and also know how proud Ron and I are of her.  She has some wonderful gifts and talents that will help her to be a wonderful leader now and later on in her life and I hope that this experience has taught her some valuable lessons that she can use for years to come!  We love you and are so proud of you, Lia!

Lia standing next to one of the two, larger posters we were allowed to make.

And Lia standing next to one of the smaller posters we made.

Lia giving her speech at the election assembly.

Another shot of my brave girl with some of the other contestants sitting behind her.

Lia walking back to her seat.

Lia sitting back down while smiling at her good friend, Adalyn, who is one of the girls who ended up winning the secretary/treasurer position by the end of the day.