By Jamari Saint Cyr
National Honors Society (NHS) is an organization that is based on student academic achievement, leadership, service, and character. NHS is eligible for Juniors and Seniors with a weighted GPA of 3.5. Eligibility notices for sophomore students going into their junior year next school year go out after third-quarter grades have been submitted. We spoke with the president and club sponsor of NHS, Josh Moody and Mrs. Meadows about the roles that they both play in running the club efficiently and working alongside each other in order to strive towards success.
“Well I wanted to be involved with not only my students but other students in the school, and just help them and watch them grow and show them how to be members of the community as well, not just inside the classroom but outside the classroom as well,” shared Mrs. Meadows when explaining to us what made her want to become the club’s sponsor.
As her first year being the club’s head sponsor, Club President Josh Moody believes that she’s already doing a great job even for her first go around. “I’ve been really proud of Mrs. Meadows,” Josh told us. “She’s been great. She keeps in constant contact with me, any questions I have she’s always available to speak to so she’s been really great in making up agendas, looking for opportunities, keeping everything smooth the way it should be and also holding everyone else accountable, if I’m lacking or if I’m ever not up to par she’s always there so she’s been a great sponsor so it’s been a really cool dynamic to be able to work with her in a close setting.”
Under her leadership, the club has already done many events from Tunnel to Towers, a run that’s held to honor the memory of a late firefighter who lost his life during 9/11, which is done nationwide in different locations. This was an event that she told was very impactful for the club members that participated so much so to that it made them want to continue supporting the event in the future. Some other honorable mentions that the club has backed up include Feeding Children Everywhere where the club packaged over ten thousand meals for local families and an adoption of a portion of Vick Road which the club does regular cleanups for.
Like any other club or honors society, there are certain behavior and academic standards that are to be held by the students involved. “[I] expect them to obviously keep their grades up,” Mrs. Meadows explained. “They need to keep their grades up, but also to be examples for other students in this school so always following the school rules, dress code, they need to dress appropriately, behaving appropriately and then to represent the school in a positive manner when they’re not on campus as well so they do a lot of volunteer work outside in the community. So when they’re in the community, they’re representing our high school and the students of our school. [Also] that they have good leadership skills in the club as well, communication, organization, stuff like that.”
Josh Moody is a senior and has been a participant in many other clubs and activities around the school. He serves as the leading president of National Honors Society which in itself comes with many tasks and responsibilities.
“Really the main role of being president of NHS is to lead meanings by speaking and keeping people up to date with the agenda, what we have going on and just the events we’ve planned out or events that arise like with the opportunities that we get throughout the community,” Josh expressed. “Being president though you speak in front of the society during meeting, you speak to your officers during the officers meeting; you’re really just the head figure, you may not be making up everything by yourself, like a lot of the officers and especially our sponsor Ms. Meadows she’ll make up the opportunities for us, but being president is just about pushing it out and communicating it with everybody else.”
For Josh, being the president of National Honors Society has had many benefits and new opportunities for him.
These similar opportunities and benefits also are then reflected upon his fellow officers as well. “Being president is really cool,” Josh said. “There’s a lot of great opportunities that that get to come across my “desk” as well as my officers so it’s really cool to be in charge of the officers and be in charge of the society and find these new opportunities, send them out and push them out and be able to see not only the impact these opportunities have on the community but what they have on our members as well so it’s really cool seeing officers grow throughout the year, seeing how they develop leadership skills and it’s just a really cool society overall.”