This is a guest post from Will Burgess, a member of the Manchester Essex Green Team.

Going into the ACE Leadership Training, I will be completely honest, I was extremely nervous. I thought we were going to pile into the aquarium, and listen to presentation after presentation. After about an hour through the meeting, I was completely mistaken. We were up and moving, playing games, listening to music and interacting with our peers.

Going to the meeting as a mentor school and a mentor student, I felt pretty proud. I was able to present to learning schools about how our composting system has succeeded. I am usually not a presenting type of person, but presenting at the ACE training was almost stress free. Everyone was very nice and understanding when I was presenting, there were no side conversations, and they looked very interested in our topic of discussion.

After the training I felt accomplished, in a way. I felt like we (Manchester Essex Green Team) did all we could to provide valuable information to the learning schools. I would definitely attend another training. The environment, the people, and the atmosphere made it a very comforting place!