During the 1994 – 1995 school year, a new student teacher entered Sartell High School. Although she barely knew any of the people surrounding her in the small high school community, she took her job head on and embraced it with a passion unparalleled by any other. Ever since, this student teacher was hired by our high school as a teacher in the Social Studies department, and has gone above and beyond in involvement in our high school community, becoming the advisor for both Student Council and National Honor Society. This is only a skeleton of Mrs. Fredrickson’s storied teaching and advising career, and recently, she added more to this legacy when she was selected as Minnesota’s Warren E. Shull Student Council Advisor of the Year.

Mrs. Fredrickson has been a member of this school since 1994, when she first student-taught here. Right off the bat, she became very interested in what our Student Council did under the guidance of then-advisor Mrs. Steve. Mrs. Fredrickson unofficially began her Student Council involvement after she was hired in 1995 by chaperoning at dances put on by the council. She said that she was different from most other chaperones in the fact that she “would be…walking around, talking to kids,” as opposed to just standing and watching from the sidelines. She then took on an even bigger role when Mrs. Steve’s student council chose to host the Minnesota Association of Student Councils (MASC) State Convention. When this came around, all teachers in the district had a role to play in making the convention a success, and Mrs. Fredrickson had a blast helping with many aspects of the convention. Soon afterward, Mrs. Steve asked whether Mrs. Fredrickson would be her co-advisor, especially as Mrs. Steve began to advance her leadership district-wide. When Mrs. Steve became principal, Mrs. Fredrickson took over as the full-time Student Council advisor, and the rest is history.

Mrs. Fredrickson took some time out of her day to interview with the LeSabre and talk about what Student Council means to her and how it has shaped her. When asked what she values most in Student Council, she values the leadership development given to the students, the lessons that can be learned, and the activities that our council puts on. Mrs. Fredrickson has the belief that, “Leadership is something that can be developed in every person,” and she always encourages that belief into her Student Council members. She feels that school activities are a great way to get students involved in our school and to give them a safer and much more fun option for spending their Friday or Saturday night.

We also had to wonder about the obvious, and ask her about how much time she puts in to our school and what drives her to do this. Although she did not necessarily say how much work she truly puts into our school (in her humble manner), she did say that she does not necessarily find teaching and being a Student Council advisor as work. She did tell us that her husband has asked why she doesn’t just put a bed in her classroom given that she almost always stays until about 7 or 8:00 in the evening. Mrs. Fredrickson does find the high school as being her “second home,” and she loves working with students both in class and in Student Council. She believes in giving students the best opportunities possible, and that we “are only limited by our own selves” in taking these opportunities.

We then asked her, as a final question, how Student Council has shaped her into the wonderful person she is today. She started off by saying that she is not a perfect person, although we students know otherwise. She also thinks that she has fallen short in many aspects of her life, such as in service, but she feels that she has made up for that by being so involved in our school. She says that she has been shaped by seeing students both in class and in Student Council grow and mature over time, and she finds it rewarding to see all the changes that students go through from when they walk in to the high school to when they move on to post-high-school life. She says that is great to see students realize that it is up to them to “steer their bike” and decide where they will go with their lives.

The Warren E. Shull Advisor of the Year Award is an annual award given by the National Association of Student Councils (NASC) to one high school and one middle school student council advisor that is a member of NASC. The award was named in honor of Warren Shull, a Student Council advisor in Oklahoma who started NASC back in 1931. After he died in the 1980s, this award was created to honor his legacy and those who follow in his footsteps of exemplary leadership as an advisor. The MASC State Advisor, Doug Erickson of Orono High School, selected Mrs. Fredrickson to be the Minnesota winner of the Warren Shull Award because of her high involvement in Student Council at the local, divisional, state, and national levels and her leadership not only amongst students as an advisor, but also for her leadership amongst other advisors across Minnesota. She has consistently volunteered to help as an advisor mentor at the MASC workshop for new Student Council advisors, and has been a leader and inspiration to many other advisors in Minnesota because of what she does within our school. She also consistently brings members of the Sartell Student Council to leadership training opportunities both in Minnesota and around the nation. After going through a lengthy application process, including two letters of recommendation from Sartell Student Council President Hannah Yackley and our principal, Mrs. Steve, she was officially recognized by NASC as the Minnesota winner this February.

With this official recognition as the Minnesota winner of the Warren E. Shull Award, Mrs. Fredrickson now moves on to the regional level of the selection process. The State Advisors from Region IV of NASC, which include Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, will meet again later on during the school year to select a Region IV winner that will go on to the National level alongside other regional winners at the NASC National Convention in Portland, Oregon in June.

Our staff at the LeSabre wish Mrs. Fredrickson all the best as she moves on to the next round of the selection process, and we thank her for all that she has done to make Sartell High School the place it is today.