Now, this isn’t your typical leadership seminar that is full of long lectures, it is probably one of the most exciting leadership seminars you will ever attend. It is made 100% for the short attention span minds of teenagers, and it certainly keeps our attention. With amazing workshops, stellar speakers, and a magical venue, The Disneyland Resort, it is basically set up for the ultimate fun learning experience.
Notre Dame students have attended this annual event for a long time now and each year it gets better and better, with new speakers and new events. The event consists of a 7:30 a.m. gathering at the Disneyland Convention Center for breakfast and a large group session with phenomenal keynote speakers. Before the speakers go up, every school is chanting cheers and showing off their school spirit, it is certainly one of the loudest rooms you’ll ever be in. After hearing some empowering words of wisdom from the keynote speaker, we are all sent off to our individual workshops. Each workshop is unique in its own way and aimed toward a different aspect of student leadership. Some can be simply informative and deal with things like running blood drives or helping with your public speaking phobias, and others can be extremely loud and fun like how to make dances more interesting or how to bring more pep to your rallies. After this event, we are sent back into the convention center for lunch and are exposed to a realm of giant jumpers and slides and blow up boxing arenas and obstacle courses. Not to mention the spectacular dance that is held after lunch with amazing lighting and DJs each year. This is definitely one of the craziest parts of CADA. Everyone is having fun dancing and singing. Now, you might wonder, what could possibly top off all this fun? Well, how about a nice ASB family trip to the happiest place on earth, Disneyland!
Although the convention and day as a whole is lots of fun, there is also a lot of learning involved. Everything that we learn in the sessions is typed up as a formal report after the event. The Executive Council then finds ways to incorporate everything we learned into an event or project and use that information to innovate. CADA is most definitely the most memorable event of any ASB member and the perfect way to have fun while learning at the same time. Thank God for CADA, thank God for ASB!
Andrew Alonso is a senior at Notre Dame High School and serves as Executive Council President of the Associated Student Body.