Thirteen high school aged students in a small fast food restaurant generally spells trouble. Picture it: drinks spilled, chickens finding a way to suddenly take flight after being grilled, and even the walls glistening with a new coat of paint, courtesy of thrown tomatoes. Yeah, typical high school age hooliganism, but definitely not what went down at the City of Fairfax Noodles & Company on May 18th! That day marked the first CAPTA tutor representative happy hour, where representative tutors from the CAPTA schools could choose to attend.
It was a great experience, getting to meet and talk to all the tutors from across the area! Many of the junior tutors were CAPTA student representative hopefuls who plan to run for the position in the 2015-2016 school year, and their ideas showed that they were definitely fit to fulfill it! There was no dearth in conversation once everyone arrived – from on-the-spot introductions to mutual tutoring struggles, everyone took part in making the first happy hour a great one. Ideas like having a greeter, tutoring “DJ”s, and small committees led to everyone walking out of that small restaurant with new ideas to complement their full stomachs.
One of the big ideas that we all contributed to and agreed on is the creation of a student board – and you can definitely expect to see some of these names on that board next year!
In attendance:
| Tutor | School | Tutor | School |
| Leina T. | Broad Run | Sara K. | Centreville |
| Kelly K. | Broad Run | Alison G. | Centreville |
| Lennon | Herndon | Katherine | Oakton |
| Emma | Herndon | Phoenix | Edison |
| Claudia F. | West Springfield | Elizabeth | Chantilly |
| Katherine | West Springfield | Alice | Chantilly |
| India P. | West Springfield |
On the more tangible content-side of this post, I’d like to introduce the blueprints to our means of student connection: the Tutor Advisory Board! In addition to having the CAPTA Executive Board, we all agreed that it’d be great to have the tutors play a bigger role in CAPTA by creating a Tutor Advisory Board. This board will be purely student-run, with the two CAPTA Student Representatives (who also attend the bi-monthly Executive Board meetings) at its head and each CAPTA school will select two delegates to serve on this Tutor Advisory Board where they will be a direct line of communication between their center and the Student Representatives! While the more specific details of this board are still being fine-tuned (such as meeting dates, locations, and methods of communication), stay posted for more information regarding this amazing opportunity!
Overall, there’s not much else to say – after all, wouldn’t you rather attend a party than hear about it from someone else? If so, why not take this as your opportunity to make it known that you want to attend one of these next year!? Stay frosty, CAPTA Tutors!
Phoenix Jitpaisarnsook
2014-2015 CAPTA Student Representative