My Two biggest Take-Aways from "The Leader in Me"

For the past few years, my afterschool program has been participating in "The Leader in Me" program. Based on Stephen Covey's "Seven Habits for Highly Effective People, the program strives to teach children the habits that they will need to become effective future leaders. I have taken away from the program a lot of things, but the two most important things are that children need more of a voice and that we need to teach children to become responsible for their own learning.

Lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about the ways that I can give children more of a voice in my future classroom. One way is by having more classroom jobs than just your typical door holder and line leader. I want the children to help me create bulletin boards. I want a child to be the secretary and pass out papers, etc. We need a classroom greeter introduce themselves and the class to our guests. There are a lot of things that kids can do.

In the past few years I have also created a Friday club program. This is a program where the children are in charge of teaching. They have to write lesson plans and prepare all of the activities for a short 30 minute lesson on a topic of their choosing. How do I see this working in the classroom? Instead of calling it Friday clubs I could call it Friday Experts. Maybe give the children to the last thirty minutes of a Friday afternoon or those half days before a vacation to be in charge and lead. Some of the clubs I have seen kids do have been amazing, and it does wonders for teaching the kids about the benefits of planning ahead. Writing the lesson plans and presenting the lessons cover those first few English common core standards in any grade, but I have mainly used this program with older kids.

Next time I will speak more on helping children to become responsible for their own learning. Until then, go forth and grow! (I don't know. That may be my new catchphrase. What do you think?)