Get to Know Leelanau: The Scoop from Sara ABOUT A 12 MINUTE READ –  Last Friday, in a little corner on the patio of Good Harbor Grill, I sat with Sara House, a Leelanau student who started her freshman year and will be a senior this fall. I’ve been wanting to write a blog for a while about making the most of a Leelanau experience, and I realized that our students are the ones who have the most valuable insights! Sara will give you her unfiltered scoop on thriving at Leelanau, plus some other tasty tidbits. Buckle up, we’re about to hear about orange juice concentrate, zombie fish, and The Devil Wears Prada! Kate: If someone were coming to Leelanau, what’s your advice on how to make the most of the experience? Sara: My number one piece of advice that I always have given to every single student regardless of anything about them is to just make sure that you don’t get sidetracked about who you are. You have to keep checking in with yourself: Is this how I want to behave? Do I feel good about how I’m working towards who I want to be? And...

Camp Daggett: Leadership Uncovered ABOUT A 2 MINUTE READ –  The sun beamed down on our faces, and at night we were warmed by sparkling fires. The snow glistened off the towering maple trees and the frozen surface of Walloon Lake. It was the perfect setting for a peaceful retreat. But peace was only a small part of last week’s mid-winter adventure. Instead, students and faculty spent most of their time stepping through deep conversations, performing acrobatic acts on a 40-foot high ropes course, trusting each other while blindfolded, and practicing some of Leelanau’s core values. We were reminded that self-awareness, resilience, courage, integrity, and leadership are often discovered together – and when we least expect it.  I spent time with the sophomore and freshman cohorts during our Camp Daggett exploratory program. I witnessed these students building outdoor shelters as a team, soaring through the air on ropes to be sure their whole team made it to the other side (because lava bubbled below them, of course), and climbing a 30-foot rock...

The Island School: Where the Obstacle is the Way ABOUT A 3 MINUTE READ –  Even before arriving at their tropical destination, Leelanau’s Winter Term exploratory group found themselves practicing the motto of the host school.  The obstacle is the way. You see, our Leelanau world travelers missed their connecting flight from Nassau to Eleuthera at the very outset of the trip. Instead of panicking, they treated the airport staff with grace and made the best of it.  They arrived the next morning at The Island School, where they would be asked to meet daily deliberate challenges –learning the only way to overcome them was to go through them. Junior Sara House put it beautifully, “You don’t have to have everything figured out beforehand to take that first step in the right direction.  Throughout the whole trip, I kept telling myself that.” Sophomore Mark Porter also realized this during xer first-time scuba diving. Mark said, “Before getting into the water, I was holding my mask to my face. I was wearing all of this heavy equipment, sitting on...