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Aylan Pratt falls off of a ladder while other Havre Leadership High School members wait to catch him Tuesday in Montana State University-Northern's Student Union Building Ballroom during an exercise at a two-day retreat at the start of this year's Leadership High School. Pratt said that while he let himself fall, he thought, "I'm going to hit the floor." The other members caught Pratt and prevented that.
Leadership High School students gathered Monday and Tuesday for the 2016 retreat at Montana State University-Northern to get to know each other and learn how to work as a team in the start of the Havre program's 17th class.
Havre's Leadership High School is an effort between the Havre Area Chamber of Commerce and Havre High School that enables students to become involved in community service projects and earn scholarships.
All 20 leadership students are high school juniors and were approved to be in the program after speaking to coordinator Debbie Vandeberg and having their application approved by a committee made up of Leadership alumni and local business people.
The students were working on the trust fall Tuesday before lunch in the Northern ballroom.
One student at a time climbed a ladder to fall back and be caught by a blanket of locked hands created by his or her fellow leadership students.
"Spotters ready?" the student on the ladder would ask.
"Ready to fall," everyone would shout back.
"Fall away," the student would shout, before falling back to be caught by his peers.
Marty Foxman from Great Falls was the facilitator for the activity. He said the activity is a metaphor for things that are new and different - "Do you see new situations as a challenge or a threat?"
Foxman said that most of the students will probably leave Havre and go to college in larger cities where they'll be confronted with something new and different.
No one was obligated to fall back, he said. In that sense, the activity can also be a metaphor for peer pressure - "Are you doing it because everyone else is?"
Aylan Pratt is 6 foot 4 inches and weighs 180 pounds.
He said he was "kind of" concerned about doing the trust fall because being able to put his trust into other people's hands is difficult, adding that the ladders is higher than it may seem.
But Pratt said, it also wasn't necessarily a hard decision.
"I don't mind falling. I accept the worst," he said.
Pratt said Leadership has taught him to trust, to help people, how to gain trust and listen. It has also helped mold him into a leader.
"You learn how to be a follower. A good leader has to be a good follower," he said.
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