As I drove to my first day of training for the Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council, my hands were definitely tighter on the steering wheel than usual. I was nervous in a way I hadn’t really felt before — not test nerves, not game-day nerves, but the kind that show up when you walk into a new space and honestly don’t know if you belong there yet.
I knew why I had been appointed as a representative from my school. I’ve never really been shy about telling my principal what I think. I’ve always had opinions — sometimes a lot of them — about what was working at Chamberlain and what needed to change. If something didn’t sit right with me, I usually spoke up.
But that was my school.
Chamberlain was a safe space I had built over time. It didn’t happen overnight. It took effort and honestly, a lot of struggle — like it does for so many students trying to find where they fit. Eventually, I did. Going into my senior year, I felt ready to call myself a student leader and to take responsibility for being part of Chamberlain’s long, proud legacy.
What I wasn’t ready for was stepping outside of that comfort.
The Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council brought together student leaders from more than 20 high schools across the district. Suddenly, I wasn’t just representing myself, or even just Chamberlain. I was one voice in a room full of students who already seemed confident, organized, and deeply involved in leadership work that had been going on for a long time.
I didn’t feel ready.
I walked in anyway.
The truth is, that overwhelmed feeling didn’t go away right away. I kept comparing — my school to their schools, our progress to their programs — and quietly wondering if I really belonged in that room. As students shared the work they were doing, it only made that feeling stronger. They talked about monthly leadership meetings, detailed work plans, ongoing data conversations, and real student-led initiatives already happening. 
At Chamberlain, our Principal’s Advisory Council (PAC) had met once in the spring.
That meeting mattered. We looked at data to better understand academic challenges. We had honest conversations about how students felt about our school’s climate and culture. It was meaningful — but it was also just a start. There was no monthly meeting schedule yet. No real work plan. No consistency.
And on top of all that, the second representative from my school didn’t even show up for training.
That part really stuck with me.
In the middle of feeling overwhelmed, finding Margaret helped more than she probably knows. She was a student leader from another school who had already served a year on the council. She helped me understand how things worked, what was expected, and, most importantly, reminded me that feeling unsure didn’t mean I didn’t belong.
Mrs. Erickson from the Alliance for Public Schools was also incredibly welcoming. She created space for us to be honest — not just about leadership roles and titles, but about what it really means to represent other students and take that responsibility seriously.
As the day went on, something started to click.
Leadership isn’t about walking into a room with everything figured out. It’s about walking in willing to figure it out. It’s about noticing what’s missing — not as failure, but as work that still needs to be done. And it’s about accountability, especially when things don’t go exactly as planned.
By the end of that first day, I stopped asking myself whether I deserved to be there. Instead, I asked a different question:
If I want to call myself a leader, what am I going to do next?
The answer was clear. There was work to do — at Chamberlain and within myself. I couldn’t wait for things to be built for me. I had to help build them. That meant committing to our PAC, creating structure where there wasn’t any yet, bringing more student voices into the conversation, and making sure feedback didn’t just get collected — but actually led to change.
I didn’t walk out of that training feeling perfectly confident.
But I walked out determined.
And I have learned, sometimes, that’s exactly where leadership begins.
Breanna Peppers is a senior at Chamberlain High School in Tampa, graduating in May 2026. She completed the Junior Achievement 3DE course of study and served this year as the Senior Representative to the Hillsborough County Superintendent’s Student Advisory Council. Passionate about student voice and leadership, Breanna will continue her education at Florida Gulf Coast University in the fall of 2026.
