Denise Power, Director of Student Life, Branksome Hall, Toronto
What is your leadership style? Four years ago, I found myself asking this question to a group of students. One responded, “I don’t know what type of leader I am, because I have never had a leadership role.” It was in that moment that I realized I needed to not only change the question, but expand our students’ perspective on leadership.
Fast forward to 2014 when Branksome Hall launched their new Strategy which included the key priority to develop Transformational Leaders who value their Branksome experience and give back to their community. As Director of Student life, I was charged with bringing this priority to life in the community along with the help of a task force comprised of community stakeholders. It became evident that while our school supported the notion that all students have the opportunity to develop leadership, only our student leaders received training. If we wanted to support Transformational Leadership development, we needed to a) create a philosophy that resonated with our community and b) embed leadership development in the classroom.
The goal was simple; build a school culture where all students could experience explicit instruction on leadership. In addition to sharing the philosophy and competencies in assembly, I spent a school year leading Lunch and Learn workshops with teachers. Collectively, we created a set of corresponding competencies that articulated what Branksome Hall valued about student leadership. This information created the foundation for the establishment of our new Grade 9 leadership course in 2014.
Early on, there was an obvious learning curve. While the students received valuable instruction on building effective teams and powerful communication, the classes seemed like an addition to an already full workload. We also had not created the opportunity for our teachers to be involved. This past year, we were fortunate to have specific time carved out in Grade 9 for students to participate in the leadership classes with a core of teachers dedicated to teaching these classes.
Special Olympics Sports Day
As our program has evolved, the teachers and I have continually worked toward creating meaningful leadership opportunities for every student. Out of this emerged a powerful capstone project for our Grade 9 course: creating and leading a Special Olympics Sports Day for students with intellectual and physical disabilities. Over the course of eight weeks, the students participated in the leadership lessons in which they not only explored their personal leadership strengths and challenges, but also explored the issue of barriers to access.
Through these classes, students learned about themselves as leaders and also about the barriers people with a disability face. After this process, students identified specific leadership roles that they could take on to contribute to the Special Olympics Sports Day. Some students took on the role of Team Leader or Station Leader in which they were working one-on-one with students with disabilities. Other students organized Opening and Closing Ceremonies, transportation, or lunch. Regardless of the roles, all students had to research the needs of the population with whom they were working so they could truly understand and develop empathy.
The students spent weeks preparing for their Special Olympics Day. They consulted with their teachers, researched online, connected with our local Special Olympics chapter, and most importantly, connected with our partner school. On the day of the event, all 110 Grade 9 students sprung into action, ready to lead. When the participants arrived on campus, our transportation leaders ensured that every participant was personally greeted by smiling enthusiastic students waving team signs displaying their names. I witnessed our students not only teaching athletic skills to the students, but more importantly, cheering the students on throughout the day and adapting the activities to ensure that every participant had the opportunity to experience success. I saw our students stepping outside of themselves, connecting with the participants, and helping them achieve their goals. It was truly transformative.
At the end of the day, there were new relationships formed, new skills acquired, and tears of pride shed by many. It was true a celebration of the impact of a successful student-driven, student-led initiative that was fueled by a new understanding of access and leadership.
Reflection is Key
Students were asked to reflect on how their event measured up to their original success criteria, the impact of the day, and, using our Transformational Leadership competencies, how they felt they developed as a leader through this experience. To quote one Grade 9 student, “I cannot even begin to express how grateful I am for this day and how successful the Special Olympics Day was. The amount of smiles were endless, and I could not stop smiling myself. Bravery, talent, and joy. Each child was unique and it was heartwarming to see them having so much fun. This amazing opportunity is now a tradition to look forward to every single year.”
What Lies Ahead
Our journey to embed leadership into the classroom has not always been perfect and is still a work in process, but we are proud of the opportunities that we have created the past four years. Our students speak to the competencies of “empower and motivate” or “uplifting others” when they are asked about leadership. Our history students are asked to argue whether an historical leader was effective or not using our leadership competencies to support their thesis. Our Grade 10 students participate in our Alumnae Leaders Fellowship in which Branksome alumnae speak to students about leadership and provide the opportunity to mentor them in a field-specific initiative. Most recently, our outgoing student leaders provided leadership workshops to our Grade 7 and 8 students to leave a legacy of leadership for them to build upon in the years ahead.
As a school, we continue to identify areas for improvement in student leadership and I continue to learn from my colleagues at Branksome and beyond. My hope is that when they are one day faced with the question “what is your leadership style?” they will be able to think back to what they learned about Transformational Leadership at Branksome and be able to answer the question with confidence and a true understanding of themselves as leaders.
Denise Power is the Director of Student Life at Branksome Hall, an independent girls’ school in Toronto, Ontario. In this role Denise oversees an outstanding, dynamic student leadership program throughout the middle and upper school grades. In 2014, she attended the gcLi Symposium on the Pedagogy of Leadership at Columbia University. Denise holds a masters in education from Brock University in Canada.