Guidepost #2: Where Are Your Students On Their Own Leadership Journey?
“A leader sees greatness in other people. You can’t be much of a leader if all you see is yourself.” – Maya Angelou
Now that you have a better sense of (shared) leadership and where you are on your own leadership journey, it is important to identify where your learners are as growing leaders. Below we share with you some of the most significant contributions from our three-year research project: practicing leadership is a holistic, embodied experience involving thinking, feeling, and doing.
Using the “I, We, Us” framework outlined in the Welcome module, we focus on three key aspects of demonstrating leadership. Click on each label below to learn more.
What Did Our Research Reveal?
Based on our data, four key criteria for demonstrating leadership emerged:
- Empower
- Share
- Growth
- Mentor
As you consider your own learners and context, we encourage you to reflect on each criteria and the three domains of thinking, feeling, and doing. We have provided a few reflection questions below to get you started.
When thinking about where your learners are on their leadership journey, and how you might best support them, ask yourself:
- How do I support my students to recognize, acknowledge, and act in ways that honours the importance of both feeling empowering and empowering others?
- How do I shift into shared leadership within the classroom to act as a model for my students?
- How can I cultivate a growth mindset?
- How can I reinforce the importance of the mentor-mentee relationship by modelling and creating space for students to practice?
To support you adopting or adapting our research into your classroom or learning context, we have designed a rubric that you can use, formatively or summatively, to evaluate your learners. The rubric supports a holistic approach to understanding, practicing, and embodying leadership. Click through the slides below to learn more about the key criteria and how these manifest by thinking, feeling, and doing or practicing leadership.
Before exploring the various ways you can apply our rubric inside your classroom or learning environment, check out the primer videos below. In the first video, How To Teach Kids To Lead, Simon Sinek sheds light on how to start teaching children how to lead. In the second video, How Do Children Describe A Leader, Dr. Claudia Escobar Vega shares their research exploring how children from ages 5 to 12 describe a leader.
