Willie’s Lounge is a lunch-time program conducted by the Leadership’s Student Connect team.
“[At] the beginning of the year, we’ve been trying to do it every week on Wednesday to make it consistent,” DVHS Leadership student Lauren Quimson said. “Now I think [as] we’re going into the second semester, we’re going to lessen it a bit and make bigger events.”
Occurring on Wednesdays, Willie’s Lounge is meant to provide a space for students to eat lunch together and hang-out. This includes new students and transfer students.
“We’d like to welcome [new students] to Willie’s Lounge to hang out and eat lunch and sometimes we do something extra special.” Quimson said.
This “something extra special” has manifested itself in the form of holiday-themed Willie’s Lounges. On Nov. 20, DVHS Leadership hosted its first holiday-themed Willie’s Lounge in the form of a Thanksgiving-themed Willie’s Lounge. Along with the usual classroom provided, apple pie and apple cider was handed out by DVHS Leadership students to students who came over. Following this precedent, the Student Connect team looked towards their next holiday theme: a Christmas-themed Willie’s Lounge.
“For Christmas coming up, we were thinking of doing a bigger activity, like something interactive. I think we were thinking of making gingerbread houses [as] a big activity for lunch,” Quimson said.
Though this event is still in the brainstorming step, Quimson stated that the Christmas-themed Willie’s Lounge would be one of the bigger Willie’s Lounges of the school year. Ultimately, DVHS Student Connect decided on having cookies and hot chocolate for the Christmas-themed event.
Willie’s Lounge is one of the initiatives that DVHS Leadership has brought back this school year, with some of the other initiatives being Homecoming Court. Quimsom credits DVHS Leadership teacher Daniel Bowen with pitching the idea at the beginning of the year.
“Usually, Student Connect in the past would work on new student orientation and that was their biggest project,” Quimsom explained. “But [Bowen] and our team just wanted to make sure those students stay connected and didn’t lose that [connection].”
