Leadership Training Continued

 

Leadership Training… 

I chatted with Alida about how we could do leadership training online again in Term 4 and make it available for more students. We decided to include some of the Year 5 students and provide them with leadership training opportunities that would help them be successful as leaders next year, whether or not they are officially chosen as house leaders.

I was really excited about the opportunity to have some of our Year 6 students pass on what they know to our Year 5 students. It makes sense to start this process before the new school year so we are ‘ready to go’ and we can benefit from our Year 6s ‘passing on the baton.’ 

In our first round of Meets, 12 students attended, made up of 5 current leaders and 7 Year Five students. Seven students were girls and 5 were boys. Year 6 leaders were able to discuss the good and difficult parts of being a leader. They also shared the leadership challenges we had completed together. Repeating this helped to reinforce the learning for these Year 6 leaders. I structured this as tuakana-teina learning groups with Year 6 girls teaching Year 5 girls and Year 6 boys teaching Year 5 boys. All the students chose a leadership challenge for the coming week. I still did a lot of the 'korero'. My teaching points were the 'why' of leadership. I was very conscious of the story I wanted to invite these leaders into so they would understand why these roles are so important.

In our second round of Meets, 9 students attended, made up of six current leaders and three Year Five students. Two students were girls and Seven were boys. In these Meets, we reviewed our leadership challenges from the previous week and set new goals. We also discussed the strengths and weaknesses we have as leaders. Leaders don't have to be good at everything. They use their strengths and ask others for help. One of my highlights was the boys Meet, where the students were able to identify the strengths of their peers. Again this had the feeling of being really empowering for students.

One of the things I have noticed is that creating a culture of invitation is powerful, especially when it comes from the students. At first, I started inviting a few students, and then when they started inviting others, that is when I started to sense the momentum build. Inviting a few key students and then allowing them to involve others is an empowering model that I want to understand more.

Again, I felt very privileged to work alongside these students and to have these opportunities to grow myself and to also see these young people empowered as leaders.