Supporting Leadership: Secondary School Learners

For secondary school learners, the ways in which you support leadership skills starts to grow in complexity. Read on to learn more about how you can incorporate leadership-related activities with your learners.

Thinking About Leadership (‘I’)

Shared Leadership

When thinking about your learners and/or learning environment, consider how you can carve out learning opportunities that include leadership skills. For example, how will you begin helping learners shift their thinking about leadership as an individualistic endeavour to a shared, collaborative practice. This video from Chloe Violette on shared leadership might be a good starting point. Take a look!

What Kind Of Leader Are You?

Another great starting point for your learners is to help them think about their views and beliefs about leadership, as well as their strengths as a leader. Take a moment to watch the following video titled What Makes a Great Leader where Millennials share their vision of an ‘ideal’ leader, a great jumping off point for discussion.

Next, invite learners to take We Think Twice’s free assessment titled What Kind of Leader Are You. After learners have completed the assessment, invite them to explore “the leader in me” further by reflecting on their strengths and areas of need using the following writing prompts:

What are the leadership strengths in me?

What type of leader would I like to be?

What are the essential leadership skills I may need to develop?

How can I practice courage over comfort? 

Remind learners that leadership is not fixed or finite, nor does it fit into a particular box or category. Help your learners see themselves as leaders by leaning into the diversity of leadership qualities using the videos below. Click through the slides to learn more.

Exploring Leadership Roles in the Media

With your learners, get critical about how leadership is portrayed in the media. Explore different posters and advertisements for various leadership roles including:

• Police Officers
• Fire Fighters
• Politicians
• School Officials
• Lifeguards

Invite learners to get critically curious about who is represented in the poster or advertisement and who is not. Engage in an open discussion about their observations, wonderings, and curiosities using the guiding questions below:

• Who is represented in the poster?
• What traits are associated with this social identity?
• What message does the poster convey to individuals who align with a particular social identity? What about those who don’t?
• How can I reimagine the poster or advertisement?

Feeling Leadership (‘We’)

Journaling

How can you start to shift learners’ thinking about leadership from themselves to being in relationship with others. Journaling is a powerful learning tool where learners can track their thoughts and feelings in an effort to map their growing journeys. You might consider offering structured writing prompts or sentence starters, like the ones below, or simply allow them to write freely.

Write about one of the biggest mistakes you have ever made. What important lessons did you learn from it? How has that mistake shaped who you are today? 

Write about a time where you accomplished something you didn’t think you could. What factors helped you keep going? What did you learn from the experience? 

Write about a time when someone helped you during a difficult experience. 

Who is someone you look up to and why? 

List five things you are grateful for. 

Consider how you might model journal writing for your learners as an act of leadership, courage, risk-taking, and vulnerability.

Developing Resilience

Part of being a changemaker is also developing the resilience to stand up in the face of injustice. However, this is not always an easy thing to do. Luvvie Ajayi Jones offers perspective on getting comfortable with being uncomfortable in their TedTalk of the same name. Take a look!

Following the video, engage the class in a discussion about what it means to be uncomfortable and some of the strategies that they can use to work through feelings of discomfort.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a great skill to help nurture and cultivate much of the principles of leadership including self-awareness, empathy, and ethical decision-making. Mindfulness involves adopting a conscious and compassionate approach to leadership, focusing on personal growth, fostering positive relationships, and making a positive impact on others and the world around them.

Self-awareness is a particularly critical leadership skill. According to the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) (n.d.) self-awareness includes “the ability to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts.” Self-awareness can interrupt autopilot responses and reactions, and help learners slow down and get curious about what is going on for them in the present moment. A growing mindfulness practice can move them toward this growth.

One way to help learners grow their mindfulness practice is to meet them in the here and now by helping them to understand mindfulness with greater depth. Consider offering a primer video, like Twill’s (2015) videoWhy Mindfulness is a Superpower: An Animation before moving into a guided meditation.

Grading Practices

As you develop your identity as a changemaking educator, your grading and assessment feedback offers another great opportunity to reinforce a growth mindset, as well as the principles of feeling leadership. For example, when offering descriptive feedback explicitly state, “I am giving you these comments because I have high standards, and I know that you can meet them” (Transforming Education, 2020). Consider layering in process-oriented grading schema in addition to outcomes.

Contract grading, or engagement-based grading, emphasizes process and engagement over the final product. It is an alternative form of assessment where a final course grade is based on the work a learner puts into the course. For example:

Contract grading shifts the power dynamics of a traditional classroom or grading schema and places accountability on learners to determine their level of engagement. Contract grading reminds them that you trust them to do the work, believe they can meet your expectations, and reinforces the mentor-mentee relationship – – that your role is to learn, lead, and grow alongside them.

Practicing Leadership (‘Us’)

Leadership Book Club

To help your learners practice leadership, consider how a book club might be supportive in your learning environment. For example, you might start a leadership book club where learners research, select, read, and finally discuss books on leadership, teamwork, and collaboration. If you are new to facilitating book clubs, we offer the following framework to guide you:

Before Book Club

• • Encourage learners to begin by writing or responding to reading prompts or guiding questions, such as:
    • What are your initial thoughts about the book? 
    • What does the author want me to know? 
    • What assumptions, values, and beliefs does the author bring to this book? 
    • How has this book changed my perspective? In what ways? 

During Book Club

• • During discussions, remind learners the importance of active listening and curious questioning such as:
    • I hear that you said… and I’m thinking… 
    • Tell me more about… 
    • I am wondering if you also considered… 
    • I agree/disagree with… 

After Book Club

• • To culminate your book club, encourage learners to consider the transformative power of literature by writing a 1-2 page reflection where they explore how the book has changed them and/or their perspective on the world.

Re-Imagining the World

One of the fundamental principles of changemaking education is helping learners reimagine the world and take action toward making that dream a reality. Solli Raphael, the youngest winner of Australia’s Poetry Slam 2017, delivers a powerful message when art and activism collide. Solli, and other performance artists, can be used as inspiration for young people to start thinking about how they might want to reimagine and engage with the world around them. In the second video, Solli goes on to reveal how the power of words has transformed their life.

Similarly, providing young changemaker role models can move your learners forward. Click through each slide to learn more.

Classroom Activism

Practicing leadership can also manifest through various forms of social activism where learners select, organize, and lead different events or days of action. You could even create committees focused on specific community action projects or initiatives. For example, learners might organize a walk, ride, or roll to school day for your school community in an effort to bring awareness to environmental issues and promote green communities, as well as healthy lifestyle habits. Another group of learners might support the Shoebox Project by organizing and donating a curated shoebox filled with everyday essentials for unhoused female-presenting individuals. A final group of learners might opt to organize Pink Shirt Day events such as a social media campaign or poster contest. Learners can join committees based on their interests, such as environmental sustainability, social justice, or community outreach. Each committee can collaborate to plan and implement projects that make a positive impact in the school or local community.