Helping Hands from Student Ambassadors

Are you looking for a way to make new students not feel left out? According to Ms. Shipley, Olympia Unger, and Rylee Young, student ambassadors, can be one of the best helping hands for new students. According to Ms. Shipley -ZIS middle school counselor- they can help in all sorts of different ways, from helping your new students feel more comfortable in the schools to giving the new students a privilege to have friends at school instead of being alone at the beginning of the year. But how has Ms. Shipley set up the program so far? 

At Zurich International School (ZIS), I interviewed the school counselor, Ms. Shipley. She is in charge of assigning new students a student ambassador. In this interview, I asked Ms. Shipley how she planned to set up the program throughout the years ahead and how she has currently done it. At ZIS, Ms. Shipley tries to have the students pick who they want to be an ambassador for instead of randomly picking as she has done in previous years. After a moment of thinking about this, she answered, "They are more involved if they say, 'Okay I choose…' vs. me saying 'Okay you've got…'" Now we have a clear viewpoint on how Ms. Shipley had done it in previous years. But how does she assign a student to be an ambassador? 

I also asked Ms. Shipley how she initially chose the ambassadors for the student. She says, "It's based on an advisory class. So what happens is, the advisory classes are put together first. And around that same time during the school year, I'll try to advertise and see who's interested, then I will do the training. So the student ambassadors have to show up to the lunchtime training because we talk about specifics about how to be a good ambassador and what's expected. After all, the role starts during the summer." Then later, she explains that "We put the Advisory classes together, and then I can see who in those advisory classes are trained ambassadors. Then we put the new students in." Now Ms. Shipley told us about how she assigned the students to the ambassadors but is it easy contacting the student?

The student ambassadors start contacting the new students at the beginning of the summer via WhatsApp or text messages. Olympia Unger - A 7th-grade ZIS student ambassador- explains this by saying, "Ms. Shipley sent their parents an email about me, then they emailed me, then I emailed back introducing myself and asking if they have any questions. Then I asked for my person's number; then, it got way easier contacting them." This is the viewpoint of Olympia Unger telling us the way that she contacted her person. Olympia Unger said that contacting her person was easy, but what is it like from a new student's perspective?

Rylee Young - A 7th-grade ZIS new student - offers her opinion on student ambassadors by saying, "I thought that it was really good and a good way to start the year. It was awesome knowing that we would meet one person at ZIS so that we could at least have one friend before school started." Then, later on in the interview, she goes on to say, "I feel like every kid that has an ambassador will start the year off great with friends." 

“I thought that it was really good and a good way to start off the year. It was awesome knowing that we would meet one person at ZIS so that we could at least have one friend before school started.”

- Rylee Young, Grade 7

As Ms. Shipley and Olympia Unger said in the interview, it doesn't take up much time for the people who want to be student ambassadors. All that would be required of them would only be that they show up to one lunch meeting and then text their assigned student as they would normally do to their other friends. And you may wonder what the people think about this program; well, Ms. Shipley, Olympia Unger, and Rylee Young have shared what they think about it.

According to Ms. Shipley, Olympia Unger, and Rylee Young, student ambassadors are critical and good to have at schools worldwide. This article will hopefully give you an idea about what student ambassadors do if they like the program, what you need to do to stay in contact with the new student, the viewpoint of a new student, and how they felt about it.

Additional Information and Special Thanks:

Click here to learn more about Student Ambassadors, what they do, and how they do it. In addition, this video explains more about what Student Ambassadors do at ZIS.

Thank you, Ms. Shipley, Olympia Unger, and Rylee Young for helping me complete this article with lots of good information about student ambassadors.