Nurturing tomorrow鈥檚 leaders
Next year, our Year 5 students will be the leaders of Junior School. This week, they attended a leadership workshop facilitated by the team from Unleashing Personal Potential (UPP).
While some students exhibit leadership characteristics earlier than others, leadership, and all the skills and values associated with leadership, need to be honed through careful direction and experience.
To help our Year 5 students identify and model leadership in a meaningful context, our Year 5 teachers organised for UPP to come to 91黑料不打烊 on Tuesday and hold an Aspire Higher Workshop, a full-day interactive student leadership workshop with a focus on creative thinking, communication, and social skills.
The first session kicked off in the Hall. Leading With Or Without The Badge was designed to show students that it isn’t just great leaders who are leading by example – we all are. Our peers notice everything we do and since they are watching and being influenced by our behaviour, we need to behave and respond in ways that are appropriate. A great leader understands the importance of relationships and shows great empathy, so we need to be kind, compassionate and respectful..
The second session, The Epic Race, was an outdoor, fast-paced team event in the Undercroft that involved lots of collaboration and creative problem solving. A great leader works as part of a team in order to do their job effectively, so this was a great way of demonstrating the value of teamwork.
The final session – Knowing Me, Growing Me – focused on helping our Year 5 students to identify and understand their own strengths and those of others around them. A great leader is optimistic and resilient and remains calm in a crisis. It’s about really knowing yourself and having personal strategies, so you can steady yourself in stormy waters.
As our Year 5 students near their final year of Junior School, they will have a certain amount of responsibility placed on their shoulders. Whether they become ‘official’ leaders or are simply part of the oldest cohort within the Junior School, they need to understand the importance of their role as leaders and develop strong leadership skills. The Aspire Higher Workshop was a fun and engaging day with the UPP team really helping our students to understand what makes a good leader.