Leadership Conference: Problem solving activity

On the first day of our leadership conference, we asked all mentor groups to consider the following:

Your school has recently been dealing with the problem of students smoking. There have been all sorts of talks and assemblies to address the problem, but nothing seems to be working. Out of options, he headteacher gives you, the SRC, a chance to do something about it. What do you do?

It was great listening to the number of creative solutions each group came up with; here's a list of some of them:

1. Set up a counseling department in school
2. Arrange an educational trip to a psychiatric hospital to learn from the experiences of (marijuana) smokers
3. Talk to the government to start an anti-smoking advertising campaign
4. Talk to students about peer pressure
5. Tell the parents of students who smoke
6. Pray for the students
   
7. Show a video/give an interactive presentation on the effects of smoking
8. Write articles to the government calling on them to lower tax on cigarettes so students can't afford to buy them or;
   
9. Call on the government to ban smoking altogether
10. Keep students busy with extra curricular activities so they won't have time to smoke
11. Conduct regular checks among students
12. Each class should have a 'watch group' to identify smokers
    
13. Students caught smoking should be disgraced to deter others
14. Students caught smoking should be suspended and then expelled if caught again
15. Reach out to students in love, be a friend
16. Try to find out what the reason for smoking; they may have problems at home etc
17. Create anti-smoking posters and put them around the school
    

Well done all of you!