Wayzata Senior Excels in Leadership and Linguistics
Lectures are a standard part of the high school experience. However, a lecture taking place at Wayzata High School Wednesday morning wasn’t being led by a teacher.
In fact, it wasn’t even in a class.
Rather, it was delivered in a committee meeting for Wayzata’s Course Ambassador program. Now a senior, Daniel Argento launched the program as a sophomore.
“Given the vast amount of courses that we have — I believe it’s over 300 — I felt the need to have a process or system in place that helps students navigate that process of selecting courses,” said Argento.
The idea behind the program is to make class registration as simple as possible for students. Argento saw the old system the school had in place and sought to improve it.
“Up until this point, there wasn’t really anything from the student end of helping students navigate that process,” Argento said. “It was primarily by means of word of mouth.”
A Well-Rounded Student
If you talk to the staff members at Wayzata, they’ll tell you that Argento is about as well-rounded a student as you can find.
“He’s one of those kids that goes the extra mile for the things that he cares about,” said Amy Swenson, Wayzata’s gifted and talented coordinator. “He is so talented in just a variety of ways and has just really diverse interests and excels in all of those interests.”
In addition to starting the Course Ambassador program, Argento has also played multiple sports, he’s on the student council and he has a keen interest in linguistics.
Daniel Argento leads a Course Ambassador committee meeting at Wayzata High School.
“I conducted a year-long research study with mentors from the Minnesota Department of Education, and I got to work with English language learner students and kind of see how they interact with test questions on the math Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment,” Argento explained.
That experience with the English language learners helped to fuel a desire to become fluent in multiple languages.
“I think language is really a means to connect with more people, and this opens a lot of doors of opportunity,” he said.
Argento may be leaving Wayzata for good in a few months, but the Course Ambassador program he started will live on for the foreseeable future.
“This is not the last time you will hear about Daniel Argento,” said Swenson. “He is going to do great things because he’s already done great things.”
In the fall, Argento will attend Stanford University where he plans to study linguistics and computer science.
Daniel Argento started the Course Ambassador program as a sophomore.
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