If you ask Mark Andan what makes Buckingham Collegiate Charter Academy special, he might give you an answer you wouldn't expect.
It's not the big football stadium. Or hundreds of students filling the hallways. Or getting lost in a crowd. It's the fact that there are only about 450 students.
At first, Mark wasn't exactly sold on the idea of going to a high school that small. In his mind, it didn't quite feel like a “real high school.” But somewhere along the way, his perspective changed.
“Everyone knows almost everyone, the teachers know you personally, and it’s a nice place that I think allows you to grow as a student and as a person,” he said.
And Mark has done plenty of growing.
Today, he's BCCA's ASB Secretary, a position that might sound like it involves a lot of sitting in meetings and taking notes. It doesn't.
“It's not actually about taking notes at all,” Mark said.
Instead, his job is making sure the behind-the-scenes pieces of ASB actually get done. He manages paperwork, keeps documents organized and properly cataloged, makes copies, works with the school secretary, and spends plenty of time running around campus making sure things are where they're supposed to be. And then there's his committee. Because apparently managing the paperwork wasn't enough.
As part of the Under and Upperclassmen Enrichment Committee, or UUE for short, Mark also helps plan events designed to bring students together. One of the first big challenges of the school year was Freshman Orientation.
For Mark, getting that event right mattered. It was the first ASB event of the year and the first big opportunity for his committee to show what they could do. He wanted the new ASB members to understand the expectations and, just as importantly, wanted to start the year on the right foot.
He took on much of the planning during his executive training week, making sure the details came together and his committee was ready to create a fun and welcoming experience for the incoming freshmen.
“There was an immense amount of pressure for me,” Mark said, “but in the end everything turned out well.”
And it did. Seeing freshmen excited, participating in the games and beginning to connect with one another made all the planning worth it.
For Mark, that's the point of an event like Orientation in the first place.
Starting high school can be intimidating. You might be the kid who knew everyone at your old school or the kid who walked through the doors not knowing anyone at all. Either way, there's a lot of uncertainty. Mark wanted the freshmen to leave feeling a little less nervous and a little more like they belonged.
And that's something he seems to understand about leadership: sometimes the biggest impact comes from simply helping people feel like they have a place. That same instinct showed up when Mark helped bring another idea to life: BCCA's first Cherry Blossom Festival.
When ASB Advisor Ms. Washino suggested the idea, Mark immediately liked it. He also immediately understood that making it happen was going to be a lot of work.
So, he took it on.
He helped plan the logistics and organize the details, knowing that because it was the first festival at Buckingham, there wasn't exactly a playbook sitting on a shelf somewhere waiting for him. There was plenty of room for things to go wrong.
Instead, students and families showed up, enjoyed the event, and helped turn a new idea into a new BCCA tradition.
For Mark, it was another reminder that sometimes leadership starts with a simple thought: Someone has to make this happen. And then deciding to be that person.
But perhaps Mark's biggest growth at Buckingham has been learning to believe he can take on things that once felt bigger than him. He credits two people who helped him get there: Lincoln Clawson, last year's ASB Secretary, who encouraged him to run for an executive position when Mark wasn't sure he was ready, and Diego Rodriguez, last year's ASB Vice President and a close friend and mentor who continues to encourage him as they both pursue their goal of attending the Air Force Academy.
Their belief in him helped Mark find some belief in himself.
“You don’t have to be perfect to realize you can do something that might be bigger than you,” he said.
That's a pretty big lesson for a high school student, and maybe an even bigger one for a student leader.
Because Mark isn't claiming to have everything figured out. In fact, he's pretty clear about the opposite.
“I'm not perfect at all, and that's okay,” he said.
What he has learned is that being ready doesn't necessarily mean having all the answers. Sometimes it means being willing to try, learn from what goes sideways, and keep moving.
That's exactly what he's doing.
He's learning how to lead. He's learning how to organize. He's learning how to trust himself. And along the way, he's helping make BCCA a place where other students can find their own confidence, too.
It's kind of fitting that Mark's story started with him questioning whether a school of 450 students could really feel like a high school. Because now, he's one of the students helping make sure it feels like something even better: a community.
A place where people know your name. A place where someone notices when you step up. And maybe, most importantly, a place where someone sees something in you before you're quite ready to see it in yourself.