By Cole Rembecki
On Wed., Oct. 24, four student council officers from St. Anthony Catholic School went to the Rigali Center in St. Louis for a STUCO Officers’ Workshop. Denni Bram, the Director of Elementary School Improvement, invited four people per school. As the president of St. Anthony’s Student Council, I was one of our four. The schools got together to work as groups to better understand cooperation, communication, and work ethic.
Michael Zaki, Demi Armstrong, Chantel Brendel, and myself represented St. Anthony. The four of us shared a table with St. Alban Roe in Eureka. There were 21 schools and all but one school shared a table with another. The tables competed in different activities throughout the morning.
For our first activity we made a paper airplane. After we made it, Michael got up on the stage with other schools’ representatives and their airplanes. We had a contest to see whose plane flew the farthest. Our plane actually flew into a girl’s stomach.  One plane even got stuck in the light. We did a lot of worksheets after that. After we finished those, the program moderator, Mr. Ken Weiss, showed us a stuffed animal in a candy-corn outfit.  He called the stuffed animal “Cornelius.”  We had to come up with a fundraiser using Cornelius. Our table came up with a “guess how many Candy Corns are in the bucket” challenge. Each guess cost fifty cents and the winner would receive the bucket of candy corn and Cornelius.  The money raised would be donated to the Saint Patrick Center. Demi Armstrong presented our idea from the stage. Mr. Weiss said our idea was “exactly what he was looking for.”
After lunch, we split up into different groups and discussed other fundraisers our schools did to give ideas to other schools.  We heard lots of great ideas. After that was over we visited the chapel.  It was beautiful. The stained glass windows were so colorful and the pews were lined up sideways, facing each other. Even the lights had stained glass on them.
We had to leave if we were going to get back to Sullivan by three o’clock. It was a great experience for all of us and I encourage future STUCO officers to look forward to that day.