Leadership and Legacy: Part 3

#tearsinmyeyes moment during our Student Council meeting today which confirms many of our Q3 (Year 13 students) are thinking about their legacy in terms of their leadership. In my last 2 blog posts I described some examples  of how some students were doing this.

During General Business today one of the students shared his belief that as Student Councillors they needed to be more deliberate about being leaders throughout the school; that to be a Councillor they had to do more than merely attending meetings. It was good to see all those around the table nodding their heads.

This led to another student saying that, in her experience, making the small effort to notice a student by themselves at break time and going up and introducing yourself and sharing a little bit could be the one thing that gets the student to go home and talk about their neat day and who they met and talked with. She went on to encourage her colleagues to seek such connections with students of all 'types' as it contributed to your own understanding of the diversity around us. I was impressed with her insight.

At that point I talked with the students about how natural it is to want to stick with your own peer group and/or sub-group, especially in break times. I shared how uncomfortable I found it to mix widely in groups of people, especially when I didn't know them well. I also talked that this was one of the challenges of true leadership; to push aside your own uncertainties and social inhibitions and to show you can connect with a diverse group.

After the meeting one of the students remained to talk with me about how that day she had been talking with a new senior student and discovered that this student was struggling with our model of learning, particularly in one of her modules. This made the student who was talking with me realise that because she/we were familiar with the model and had, in fact, been with it throughout its development, not everyone understood it immediately. The new student talked about the confusion she was having with one module, so my senior asked who the teacher was and encouraged her to come with her to talk with the teacher. The new student needed some encouragement but it happened right there and then and the Student Council member moved on after having connected them.

By themselves, they may seem like small actions but collectively they are blowing me away and this type of student leadership will become the legacy of these foundation students.