INTRODUCTION

Imagine walking into a classroom where students are deeply engaged in learning. There is an atmosphere of respect, trust, and collaboration. Whether individually or in groups, students actively challenge themselves and support each other. In this imagined classroom, the teacher provides individual attention to a student or to a small group of students, while remaining confident that the rest of the class will stay on task. Now step back for a moment. What you are observing is a classroom where students are consistently displaying social-emotional leadership: They are in charge of themselves and their own actions (Leading Self), and they are working well with their classmates (Leading with Others) on important projects for their learning and growth (Changing Your World).

By focusing on developing a student’s social-emotional leadership, you can start to create classrooms like the one we’ve described. [For consistency, we use the term students throughout this book to refer to youth under the age of 18. Likewise, we use the term educators to refer to any adults who work with youth. This does not mean that this book is meant specifically for school settings.] Youth need to be competent in leadership attributes such as resilience, communication, and collaboration, and they need to have the ability to engage and motivate others in order to face the complex challenges of the 21st century (Ananiadou, 2009; Geisinger, 2016). Research conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) finds that student leadership is related to engagement with school and with more positive academic and social-emotional outcomes (DePass, Ehrlich, & Leis, 2019).

The Student Leadership Framework

In order to develop student leadership, it is necessary to understand what student leadership is and what it looks like. We define it this way: Student leadership is about building the capacity of all young people to have a greater impact on themselves, their peers, and their world. Based on multi-year, mixed-methods research with teachers, parents, administrators, and over 10,000 students in grades 3–12 in public and private schools in multiple states, CCL has developed a framework for defining student leadership (Leis, Leisman, Ehrlich, & Kosovich, 2018) and a scale for measuring it (Leis, Leisman, Kosovich, & Ehrlich, 2018).

This Student Leadership Framework describes the 14 leadership attributes (see Table 1) that are central to student leadership. These are organized into the following three distinct dimensions:¹

•  Leading Self – deep understanding of yourself and your own behavior

•  Leading with Others – working effectively with others

•  Changing Your World – working to make a positive impact in the world Each dimension is comprised of three to six attributes (described in Table 1).

Table 1: Student Leadership Framework Attributes and Definitions

This book describes each of these attributes in detail and also provides discussion questions, journal prompts, and sample activities that can be adapted for different ages and contexts to spur student leadership development in your school or youth organization—at your pace and according to your priorities.

Who This Book Is For, What’s in This Book, and Why It’s Important

This book is for teachers, principals, guidance counselors, parents, and others looking to develop student leadership. Student leadership requires students to understand themselves and work with others to accomplish their goals and change the world around them. The information and ideas in this book helps educators understand and explain the 14 attributes described in the Student Leadership Framework to the students with whom they work. This book also includes discussion questions, sample activities, and journal prompts to help educators build student capacity in these attributes. The attributes themselves are a distillation of the characteristics, actions, and perspectives that are at the heart of student leadership.

How This Book Is Organized

Each chapter in this book discusses one of the 14 important leadership attributes described in the Student Leadership Framework. Each of the book’s chapters includes the following sections:

•  Introduction. This section includes a simple description of the attribute, what mastery of the attribute looks like, and common obstacles to development.

•  Suggestions for Improvement. This section provides suggestions for building competency in the specific attribute.

•  Activity Center. This section provides suggestions of different activities that can be used in group settings to help students develop skills in this attribute. These activities may be modified for the students with whom you work.

•  Journal Prompts. This section provides journal prompts that can be given to students to stimulate reflection on the attribute. Choose or modify journal prompts to make them developmentally appropriate.

•  Integrating the Attribute into Your Curriculum. This section provides questions that can be used to facilitate conversation about the attribute with students.

•  Questions to Assess Understanding. This section provides questions that can be given to students to assess their understanding of the attribute. We recommend that these questions be used developmentally, rather than in an evaluative manner. That is, they should be used as a tool to check in on a student’s understanding of the attribute, rather than as a graded assessment of their comprehension.

•  Suggested Books to Introduce the Attribute. This section provides titles of picture books that may be used to deepen younger students' understanding of the attributes.

•  Additional Resources. This section provides additional places to look for help and advice to develop your personal knowledge, as an adult, about this attribute.

How to Use This Book

Use this book as a guide for improving and developing student leadership skills. Each chapter focuses on a unique attribute, allowing you to organize your student leadership development efforts. This book also makes an excellent companion to the Leadership Indicator for Students (LIS). For more information on the LIS see page 12.

Use the resources in each chapter to create a lesson to use with your students. Though there is no right way to craft a lesson, we suggest the following: Use the information in the chapter’s introductory text to familiarize students with the topic. You might use the question stem “How does this attribute make you a better leader?” to start a discussion with your students and to check for comprehension (see Additional Resources for more information to further your personal understanding). Work with students to discuss and establish some ways that people can become skilled in the attribute (see Suggestions for Improvement for sample strategies). Have students participate in an activity (see Activity Center for suggestions) or ask them to write about the attribute (see Journal Prompts). Incorporate the attribute into your own curriculum through debriefing conversations (see Integrating the Attribute into Your Curriculum). Additional ways to integrate the attributes into day-to-day classroom work may include:

•  Create an “Improving Leadership” contract with students and have everyone sign it. Display this contract in the classroom and refer students’ attention to it to reinforce working on the leadership behavior.

•  Conduct daily or weekly check-ins where students can share how they have been working on developing this attribute.

•  Assign accountability partners for each student to monitor and give feedback on each other’s progress. (An accountability partner is someone students can trust to offer honest feedback and support and keep them on track to meet their goals.)

•  Create a praise box. Students write down when they see another student working to become more skilled in this attribute and put it in the praise box. Decide how to share the praise in a way that works best for you and your students.

Consider using the written Questions to Assess Understanding as formative student assessment to determine if you need to spend more time explaining this attribute. Other ways to incorporate social-emotional leadership concepts in your day-to-day work may include:

•  add comprehension questions about the attribute to a project rubric

•  have students keep an observational journal in which they write about how others display the attributes

•  have the students create online portfolios in which they reflect on how they are developing their social-emotional leadership

•  noting student development in the attributes and sharing this information with parents and guardians

Norms for Discussions and Activities

Developing personal leadership attributes can be challenging, as students are asked to be deeply reflective, vulnerable, and transparent. In order to facilitate this process, it may be helpful to share the following norms:

•  assume positive intent

•  respect each other

•  listen for understanding

•  speak for yourself, not others

•  speak about yourself, not others

•  know when to step up and when to step back

•  stay open to others’ opinions

•  meet people where they are

•  allow and support all voices to be heard

Notes

¹  The original Student Leadership Framework contains a fourth dimension: Leading Academically, which is defined as the belief that learning is important and valuable. Three attributes comprise this dimension: 1) Values school (believes school is important for future outcomes), 2) Participative (participates in class/group discussions), and 3) Attentive (pays attention when the teacher is speaking). While CCL’s research identifies this dimension as an important aspect of student leadership, we do not focus on it in this book for two reasons: 1) development of the other leadership attributes described in the framework contribute to strengthening this dimension, and 2) educators already constantly and consistently focus their efforts in this area.

References

Ananiadou, K. & Claro, M. (2009). 21st century skills and competences for new millennium learners in OECD countries. OECD Education Working Papers, 41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/218525261154

DePass, M., Ehrlich, V., & Leis, M. (2019). Accelerating school success: Transforming K–12 schools by investing in leadership development. White paper. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

Geisinger, K. F. (2016). 21st century skills: What are they and how do we assess them? Applied Measurement in Education, 29(4), 245–249.

Leis., M., Leisman, T., Ehrlich, V., & Kosovich, J. J. (2018). Understanding and measuring leadership from a student perspective: Creation and validation of the student leadership scale (SLS). Poster presented at the meeting of the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, Washington, DC.

Leis, M., Leisman, T., Kosovich, J., & Ehrlich, V. (2018). Leadership indicator for students (LIS) technical manual. Greensboro, NC: Center for Creative Leadership.

The Leadership Indicator for Students (LIS)

The LIS, developed in conjunction with CCL’s evidence-based Student Leadership Framework, is a tool for assessing student leadership development needs within a school or youth organization. The LIS comprehensively examines student leadership through three different perspectives:

•  students’ perception of themselves

•  students’ perceptions of their peers

•  teachers’ perceptions of their students

This assessment highlights the gaps between the leadership attributes that the school or youth organization identifies as most important and students’ strengths in those attributes. The LIS reveals the top five attributes on which to focus student leadership development efforts for your specific school or organization. These attributes are aligned with the attributes described in this book.