Dr. Josh Berger, LL ’18, Director, Belldegrun Center for Innovative Leadership, Brentwood School (CA)
Research demonstrates that when implemented effectively, leadership programs increase school connectedness, foster positive youth development, and galvanize the power of positive peer influence (Berger, 2016). With this potential in mind, many of us return from a packed week of gcLi Leadership Lab training inspired to integrate our lessons learned back home. Personally, I was excited to become Brentwood School’s inaugural Director of its K-12 Belldegrun Center for Innovative Leadership (BCIL) whose mission is to “prepare community members to engage with real world challenges and explore solutions within and beyond the classroom.” Through the BCIL we help students follow their curiosity beyond the textbook, grapple with questions for which there are no prescribed answers, and develop lifelong leadership skills. This position provided me with the unique opportunity to research, visit, and collaborate with dozens of K-12 and university leadership centers across the country in order to help build our BCIL from the ground up. These experiences along with my Doctoral work in Educational Leadership, led to five recommendations that hopefully help those launching similar initiatives in our respective communities.
- Clarify the Mission and Core Leadership Skills
Leadership programming can target everyone from kindergartners to adults and revolve around a variety of focus areas including civic leadership, education, entrepreneurship, equity and inclusion, STEAM, athletics, arts, etc. Given this array of options, the process of crafting a mission statement can clarify the aspirational work of any leadership initiative and drive initial programming. Taking the advice from various leadership center directors, we had K-12 students, faculty, staff, and alumni work in small groups to outline priorities for the BCIL and boost initial buy-in.
Delineating core leadership skills such as active listening, design thinking, or conflict resolution is also valuable to help students acquire aptitudes that will benefit them regardless of their future leadership experiences. Our BCIL eventually agreed upon a full set of core leadership skills (twelve drafts later) but the specific competencies seem less important than the process of grappling with priorities and developing a common language teachers and students can use for training and assessments.
One of our BCIL committee co-chairs summed up the value of this intentionally inclusive launch noting, “I was in awe of the process and outcomes when I saw the committees together presenting at the K-12 meeting and fully realized the groundswell of enthusiasm for our new Center.”
2. Build a Team
As an undergraduate, I was a student manager for the Duke men’s basketball team, and more than remembering any specific win or loss, I remember Head Coach Mike Krzyzewski constantly reminding us how special it was to “be part of something bigger than ourselves.” This rang true for our BCIL team as collaborating together was a highlight of our year. Through the contributions of talented team members across all three divisions, we gained perspectives and connections one person alone could not possibly maintain.
Research supports the benefits of having diverse perspectives involved with the development of any school-wide program. Not surprisingly, leadership center directors that work predominantly in isolation describe feeling burned out and unable to build momentum for their initiatives. Additionally, programs coordinated by single individuals run the risk of fading quickly once those coordinators leave their current communities. Schools without dedicated leadership staffing may find it beneficial to form voluntary committees or provide stipends for those taking on additional responsibilities.
I also strongly recommend including students as an integral part of whatever team you build. Our student leaders continue to be extraordinarily insightful in every major decision we make, and they are by far our best promoters with their peers. As one of our seniors described, “I have loved working on my BCIL committee. I enjoy how I feel equal to the faculty in our meetings, and I feel comfortable brainstorming with them and innovating together.”
One other aspect of team building that was helpful for us involved consciously nurturing relationships outside of our own community with local K-12 schools, universities, non-profits, and professionals. As an example, this year we joined a consortium of six other schools to sponsor the LA Teen Hackathon. This experience allowed our team to learn from colleagues at a variety of schools and resulted in an event that went beyond what we would have offered had we planned it alone.
Said one of our BCIL Curriculum Innovators and Collaborators about the value of forming these cross-disciplinary ties, “There is no other forum where I get to collaborate across divisions and departments in this way, and it is so fun to see all the pieces coming together.”
3. Consider Curricular and Extracurricular Leadership Programming
Leadership centers nationwide vary significantly in focusing on curricular versus extracurricular programming. During our planning phase, we heard a lot from students about their feeling stretched thin by so many competing commitments, and therefore requesting the integration of leadership development into our curriculum so they could experience it as part of their regular school day. We tried to honor this request by helping create K-12 BCIL projects that revolved around our mission and core leadership skills. We also designed new course offerings next year with BCIL designations such as Global Health, Sustainable Earth Engineering, Advanced Entrepreneurship, Documentary Filmmaking for Social Change, The Science of Well-Being, Design with Purpose, and Refugees and Resettlement.
In addition to curricular programming, we also wanted to provide extracurricular opportunities such as leadership workshops, entrepreneurial and STEAM competitions, mentoring programs, and conferences that could not realistically be integrated into the school day. As an example, our Young Women’s Conference is an event planned largely by student leaders and includes approximately 1000 attendees from 100 local schools and organizations. It takes place on one inspiring Saturday and gives our students a unique opportunity to connect with the broader Los Angeles community in a format that could not be replicated during class time.
While evaluating whether our leadership programming would focus more on curricular or extracurricular offerings, we also found multiple opportunities to seamlessly join the two together. To illustrate this union, our BCIL launched an interactive speaker series through which professionals present major issues facing their organizations and provide related “challenge of the month” contests. Students have the opportunity to work individually and collaboratively on “challenge of the month” proposals for the professionals to review, and the organizations select the winners and provide them with a special experience. The most recent challenge revolved around building inclusive cities of the future, and the winners received tours of San Francisco’s City Hall and surrounding neighborhoods, as well as an opportunity to present their ideas to the Mayor of San Francisco’s staff.
Though our voluntary speaker series takes place at lunch, numerous Middle and Upper School Science, English, and History teachers agreed to give class time for students to work on “challenge of the month” proposals given the direct connections to their curriculum. We have been thrilled by the level of student engagement and the linking of our curricular with our co-curricular.
4. Prioritize School Support
For my doctoral dissertation, I researched successes, challenges, and solutions related to implementing school-based peer leadership programs. Through this process I heard from over 600 peer program coordinators nationwide, and one of the most important factors consistently correlated with program success was school support.
Funding is an obvious initial category of school support, and the BCIL is extremely fortunate to have the generous championing of the Belldegrun family who made our staffing, programming, and facilities possible. No doubt a lack of financial support can make it very challenging to successfully launch this kind of new initiative.
Beyond finances, scheduling is another significant type of assistance. Our schools are extremely busy places, and as one of the coordinators from my thesis noted, “if you don’t have the support of those people who are responsible for running schedules, you can hang it up. It’s not that it’s going to end… but it’s always an uphill battle.” For us, the importance of scheduling can be seen through our peer leadership program in which 20 senior leaders mentor the entire ninth grade class once per week for 50 minutes. The school has supported this program by allowing release time for all ninth graders to bond with their seniors during a weekly elective slot and by scheduling a training class for the selected seniors. This popular peer leadership program would not reach nearly as many students if it was forced into an after-school time slot as opposed to meeting during regularly-scheduled classes.
One other critical area for school support is professional development. Our university and K-12 site visits, conferences, and consultants consistently increased our collective enthusiasm and capacity for teaching leadership. We know how consequential this form of school support was for our opening year and have created a faculty committee dedicated to incorporating teachings from these on and off-campus trainings.
While program leaders should certainly strategize how to earn school support, an initial commitment from administration, key faculty members, and student leaders is a critical starting point for this type of school-wide leadership project.
5. Fail Quickly While Balancing Planning and Action
At gcLi I remember participating in the “Traffic Jam” activity, an introductory team challenge that required our group to figure out how to get from one side of a designated center point to the other within a series of pre-defined guidelines. A partner and I took a long time unsuccessfully attempting to model out the entire series of required moves with nearby twigs and pebbles. During the group reflection we realized how much more effective it would have been to fail quickly trying out some different possible solutions in real time and iterating based on the outcomes.
Reflecting on my BCIL experiences this year, this lesson continues to stick with me. In our often overly anxious and perfectionistic schools, we at times lament when students develop a fixed mindset and seem unable to embrace failure as an opportunity to learn. We wish they would take more courageous risks related to their academic or extracurricular passions rather than being driven by their future resumes or college prospects. As adults, we have the opportunity to mindfully model this courageous risk-taking for our kids, and a new leadership initiative is an ideal place to do so.
Preliminary planning for any new program is of course essential to help shape a community’s first impression; however, it takes multiple years for new programs to become fully enmeshed in a school’s culture, and if we over analyze every possible outcome without adapting to early results, we lose the opportunity to significantly improve an evolving program. Action research is messy and so is the launching of any new school-wide initiative.
One of my BCIL colleagues summarized this perfectly: “Collaborating with students in manifesting their ideas while developing skills of problem solving, communication, and community building challenges us all to be courageous and resilient. I love growing right along with them!”
While all leadership programs are unique, these five recommendations can hopefully serve as a starting point for your community’s new leadership initiatives. gcLi prepares each of us to engage with this meaningful work, and the BCIL has further confirmed my belief in the lifelong benefits of effective leadership programs.
Berger, J. R. M. (2016). The Implementation of School-Based Peer Programs: Successes, Challenges, and Solutions. UCLA: Education. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7kv3g5w2
Dr. Josh Berger has taught leadership programming in schools for fifteen years and currently serves as the inaugural K-12 Director of the Belldegrun Center for Innovative Leadership at Brentwood School in Los Angeles, California. Josh has a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from UCLA, and his dissertation on the implementation of school-based peer leadership programs received the outstanding dissertation award from the National Association of Peer Program Professionals. In addition to teaching a wide variety of leadership courses, Josh has also facilitated professional development workshops and implemented leadership development programs in local government and college and high school athletics. Josh completed his undergraduate degree at Duke University and is a graduate of the 2018 gcLi Leadership Lab.