Our Year 9 students recently headed to the University of Waikato for the Waikato Young Leaders Day (WYLD) 2026!
Alongside 450 students from around the region, they spent the day learning about teamwork, building confidence, and discovering what it means to be a positive leader in our community.
They focused on three big ideas: knowing who you are, making positive choices, and walking the talk!
Please read what Anja Patrman (Year 9), River Taverner (Year 9) and Lily Watson (Year 9)wrote about the day:
On the 1st of July, the junior student leaders of Thames High School went to the Young Leaders Day event at Waikato University. We got to mix and mingle with lots of new people; here is a little taste of how it went!
There we learned more deeply about leadership and how it can be shown in many different ways. During the very start of the day all the schools were gathered in a big lecture hall, we were briefed about the day ahead of us and were given an uplifting speech by a very lovely woman, later after that we were put into mixed groups of people, as we moved through rotations we got to meet really inspiring and amazing people who told us about their stories and how they became leaders.
A definite highlight was getting to listen to senior leaders from different schools talk about their stories and the challenges they had faced. It was really interesting to actually hear it from their perspectives; it was particularly motivating to hear from students who have experienced being a young leader.
Another activity we all enjoyed was meeting multiple new people from other schools. Most of the rotations we did encouraged us to try and speak to somebody that we wouldn’t normally chat with. We did many different activities with tons of new people, and we even got to play a few fun games towards the end of the day!
In conclusion, all of us learned a lot more than we already knew about leadership, and we certainly had fun meeting and talking to some cool new people! We hope that everyone there enjoyed themselves as much as we did! That was a very fun and enjoyable event, and we are very thankful to Waikato University for giving us such a great learning experience. Thank you for giving your time to read this!
