Student Leadership Project

5/23/11

I had a meeting with our principal today to do some planning for continuing student leadership after I leave, and to map out the ongoing relationship between SLP and our school.  We talked about the amount of time that a staff member would have to commit to this project in order to do it right, even if they had all the materials, support, and planning of SLP remotely.  Our principal said, “We need to prioritize, and we know we need to go with this before any other approach to culture because we know this works.”

5/21/11

Today we started our meeting with one of our most effective and useful training subjects yet, a focus on public speaking.  The kids picked up the key points and had a chance to practice in small groups and in front of the rest of the team.  They showed huge improvement, and expressed that they were more confident about addressing the whole school going forward.  

They also had a conference call with our new high school principal so that they could raise questions with her and get on board for school planning this summer.  They are going to use their data collection and analysis skills to gather information about student uniform preferences and after school activity preferences.  The student leaders were really excited about having some input, helping to plan new student induction, and working on the physical space of the high school to build pride in our achievements as a school.

The three subcommittees checked in on ongoing action steps, and brainstormed some ways to improve.  They debriefed about the quality of the meetings, and then the kids set some agenda items for Monday’s meeting:

-Plan to create a Welcome Back/College wall for the high school

-Address the issue of graffiti and negative comments written in the bathrooms

-Plan to train younger student leaders for the middle school and bring some of the ‘second tier’ leaders into the Student Leadership Committee in preparation for next year

On a side note, another teacher helped out with the meeting today because Naeha couldn’t make it.  When I thanked him for giving up time on a Saturday, he said, “I love coming to these meetings.  It is amazing to see what these kids get done, and it reminds me why I want to teach.”

5/16/11

Today’s meeting highlighted some of the challenges we are facing, and provided some insight into ways to improve.  The kids are working on two rounds of action steps now, and with so much success on the first round the goal was to make a plan to maintain their round 1 projects while taking the lead on the next set of projects.  Committee meetings were not as productive as they have been in the rest of our meetings, and a few lessons were learned:

1. Early in this process, it is really helpful to have staff to work with the committees; Naeha and Kim were not here today, and that slowed us down

2.  Computer skills is a leadership competency that requires training.  Training student leaders on the basics of Word, Powerpoint, and Excel will make them much more efficient and productive leaders when implementing their great ideas.

3.  Delegation, managing down, and follow-up are competencies that need to be added to the “Facilitating a Meeting” training strand.  The students are planning to pass maintenance of their round 1 actions off to ‘second tier’ student leaders, but they don’t yet have the skills to effectively manage those other students.

While the meeting was less productive than usual, students did complete round 1 actions; more importantly, I learned some clear lessons that will help to improve our effectiveness in developing the kind of student leadership that can transform school culture.

5/13/11

The fruits of Student Leadership efforts really started to become obvious today.  We had a great school-wide morning meeting.  It can best be summed up by an email from our school leader and founder who was there to check in on culture:

 “From: Ben Kleban

Sent: Friday, May 13, 2011 8:15 AM

To: middle

Subject: SHOUT OUTS all around

All,

WOW – I can honestly say that was one of the most effective, positive, thoughtful community meetings and round of shout outs in middle/upper school history.  I am super impressed with the impact of our student leaders and the improvement of student buy-in to celebrate the exhibition of our values by their peers.  Lets keep that momentum going and I have no doubt the outcomes in classrooms will follow.

Shout out for excellence to Mr. Dean for leading the efforts of improved student shout-outs and leadership from students.  Shout out to Ms. Douyon for her creativity and joy in designing such and fun and engaging presentations and ideas.  Shout out to Ms. Felter for excellence in accomplishing such positive steps forward in school culture under her leadership.

Have a great Friday,

Ben”

5/12/11

We had a lunch time check-in today.  Student Leaders are planning to recruit second tier leaders to help them maintain their first round of projects while they focus on getting the second round of projects going.  One committee set up a meeting with our principal for next Tuesday to secure time for the Awards Assembly they are planning.  Chanel asked if we could schedule an additional weekend or after-school meeting time so that they could get a weekly presentation about students who are consistently doing right started ahead of schedule.  The program is called “Get Like Me” and is a tradition at the school.  In addition, the students told me that the Facebook positivity project is starting to spread to other students, and Ivan and Joanna completed their sample survey and took the surveys home to look over and revise before distributing them next week.

5/9/2011

Another really positive school-wide morning meeting, with lots of teachers, instructional coaches and the principal approaching me to tell me that our Student Leaders are making a major difference in the way our school starts our day.

After school we had a Student Leadership meeting. We checked in on Action #1 - the “Positive Rumors” and Facebook positivity project are going very well - they are starting to spread beyond the Student Leaders.

Then we did a competency training on Survey Design because two of the committees are planning to collect data during action round two. Students learned the lesson very quickly. Then three students started and led their own committee meetings to plan Action #2. Two teachers who happened to be planning in the room stopped me afterward to tell me how impressed they were with the student-led committee meetings, and asked if we could start the same program with our sixth and seventh graders.

I was also impressed. They are beginning to internalize the Meeting Facilitation competency; managing the agenda and setting clear next steps are becoming natural to them. They developed their plans, shared, told me and the other students what they would need from us and then did a 2 minute debrief about the quality of their committee meetings. The main feedback showed they needed to organize their ideas better before and during meetings. I think it might make sense to push the Organization and Reliability competency training up to the next meeting. Some other thoughts about how to improve our implementation process:

1. Gradually incorporate “tier 2 leaders” into meetings and actions.
2. Layering new action rounds on top of old ones presents a challenge. Maybe Student Leaders should train other students to maintain the projects they have started while they continue to add new projects to improve the culture of the school.
3. The competency lessons have been really good. They are instructionally sound and effective, but it probably makes sense to tie them together with a “unit plan” including Big Ideas, Essential Questions and Enduring Understandings so that the new information is situated in a meaningful, relevant framework in kids’ brains.

5/7/2011

A very long Saturday meeting today - almost four hours before we were done. The first two hours included some great trust-building centered around a Personal Histories activity in small groups. Students shared personal experiences with each other, and I pushed them to share their own weaknesses or regrets, not just painful moment, because those really require a trust that others will not judge. Another teacher gave one student a ride home later, and reported that he girl said,

“I love our meetings.  We are doing team-building stuff where we tell each other our stories, and the whole group really feels like a close family.”

The majority of the meeting was work time for the committees to complete their first round of action steps.  

5/4/2011

Today was part two of the Louisiana Outdoors Outreach Program team-building and trust training.  Instead of canoeing, this session included ice-breaker games, trust falls, some low-ropes team challenges, and some high-ropes small group challenges. 

They really struggled with strategy at first, breaking off into small cliques instead of working as a whole group to brainstorm and problem solve.  I stopped them and reminded them of the meeting facilitation and active listening training we have done, and also stressed why we were there (to build a more effective team), then let them go back to the challenge.  A few kids took charge and brought them all together to discuss strategy.  From that point forward, they worked together really well.  On the high ropes course, where some kids were terrified, they did a good job of supporting each other.

Like the first LOOP trip, I was incredibly impressed with their reflections and shout-outs in our debrief on the bus ride back to school.  They all had great lessons about teamwork and perseverance, and a lot of nice words to say about what they saw from others, but their thoughts could best be summed up by two of the students, who said,

“I think we learned to try something, even when it seems hard at first.”

 “Yeah, because we are close to this group of people, and we know they will support us through it.”  

After we returned to school, I debriefed with our leadership team briefly. Our principal was very pleased with the progress she has seen in just a few weeks.

“The leaders are carrying themselves completely differently already. When they were in lunch today, I saw how they were interacting with the kids around them.  They were already starting to push the other kids to a higher standard.”

5/3/2011 

Great shout-outs from our kids this morning.  The atmosphere in the room at breakfast was not very good for the first day back after a long spring break. There was a lot of negativity from kids, murmuring to each other when I expected silence among them.  However, once the student leader shout-outs began, things really turned around for the better.  A few teachers approached me to say how much of a difference the shout-outs made.  One teacher said,

“Those shout-outs were so much better than any teacher-led shout-outs.”

After school, we had a meeting.  We started with “One-Minute Histories” from myself and four kids who volunteered.  This trust and team building activity is a little more risky than the “One-Minute Interviews” we did in our last meeting. The students are more vulnerable in “One-Minute Histories” because they are sharing with the whole group and not one person at a time.  I was really impressed with the kids ability to open up and share some pretty difficult stories.  Some students talked about their struggles with physical and mental illness, and others mentioned the loss of family members.  

The students seemed to be very supportive of one another.  I did notice one student seems a little less mature than the others and may need some extra work with myself or the other teachers. After “One-Minute Histories” we did some competency training with a lesson on Active Listening that was successful and followed with subcommittee work-time.  

Overall, the kids were very productive during the work time and were making an effort to use the Meeting Facilitation competency skills they had learned, especially maintaining the agenda, setting next steps tied to names and deadlines, and probing to make sure everyone is heard.