Mr. Sheehan, Advocacy Program for Success (APS) creator, first came up with the idea of the program around six years ago. The biggest inspiration for the program was a book on how children succeed. With this, Mr. Sheehan looked at his own high school experience and wanted to create a program in which the students at Padua Academy could address topics such as leadership and character development. The APS groups meet several Thursdays in each month during the flex periods, wherein different lessons to enhance leadership and success are conducted. Mr. Sheehan said, “teamwork is the most important thing when creating a new lesson plan, we have to all think about the experience that we want our students to have.”

Along with faculty input, Padua’s student-led APS Impact Group plays a significant role in deciding what they are going to do next. The purpose of the group is to bring students’ perspectives to the designing of the lesson plans. Senior and co-leader of the group, Allison Farrell, states, “we usually begin by discussing the lesson plans we had used in previous weeks, commenting on what resonated with the student body and what did not.” The goal of this group is to aid in the success of the APS program, making sure that everyone’s opinions and voices are heard. “Overall, we try to help students be more engaged in the APS program so that everyone is able to have some sort of take away from our every-other-week sessions” said Allison.

Ms. Keefe, an APS moderator, believes that students benefit from the sessions because it allows them to connect with the teachers. She states, “it allows the students to step out of the school mode, which is hard to do, but I think when they do, it gets them to be able to talk about social skills and core qualities.” One of the things Ms. Keefe loves about APS is finding out more about the lives of the student body and how she can achieve the mentorship role for the students within the school community.