By JESSA PEASE / Staff Writer

PELHAM— Third, fourth and fifth grade students at Valley Intermediate School gathered around a table, brainstorming new ways for Santa Claus to deliver presents.

After Santa’s sleigh broke down, the members of the engineering club were tasked with providing Santa with solutions to his problem. They created parachutes, zip lines and innovative new sleighs using tools provided by their teachers.

Across the hall, members of the marketing club created a list of names for the new VIS school store that they passed on to the keyboarding/Chrome Books club, who created a GoogleDoc with the information.

These are just a few of the 33 clubs at VIS that meet on certain Wednesdays from 8-8:30 a.m. They are a part of the Leader in Me initiative at the school, according to principal Robin Hollingsworth.

“They love it,” Hollingsworth said of the clubs. “They would do this every week.”

The Leader in Me is a whole school transformation process that teaches leadership and life skills to students with the idea that every child can be a leader.

The initiative utilizes the seven habits of happy kids: be proactive, begin with the end in mind, put first things first, think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood, synergize and sharpen the saw.

“Most Leader in Me schools do have clubs and its team building and there’s cooperation, all that aspect of it,” Hollingsworth said. “What we’ve done, because we are building into the academies, we’ve aligned those academies with our clubs. We have a club that goes with every academy.”

Melissa Sadberry sponsors the medical detectives club and she tries to bring in guest speakers from the medical industry for each of the club meetings. Dr. Baker Chambliss, a dentist, was the guest speaker Dec. 9.

He discussed the value and importance of the nerve and blood vessel supply and how it’s a source for DNA and stem cells. Chambliss also explained what scientists are able to do with that information.

“They are learning how scientists work together,” he said. “They seemed to enjoy it. They are very inquisitive.”