Jeremy LaCasse, Assistant Head of School, Taft School
How often have we seen situations in schools where the outcome of an activity seems more important than the process? Take the yearbook for example: how many yearbooks—ostensibly student created publications—are being produced by the faculty? How many dances, how many newspapers, how many events, which could or should easily be led by students, find faculty members stepping in to ensure “they just go well”? First, teaching leaders should involve helping students do the work of leading. Second, teaching leadership should have the students taking on and engaging with the work. Finally, teaching leadership should result in students taking responsibility for the success and/or failure of what they lead. Let’s take this apart and see where teachers get hung up in supporting student leaders.
To the first point, a fine line exists between supporting students and doing the work for them. Supporting students requires a teacher’s willingness to provide feedback and support and to have the patience to allow the student to figure out how to get the task done. Feedback is the essential tool for the teacher as she or he considers how to support students. When first provided to the student, feedback is valueless, but takes on meaning when the student decides what to do with that feedback. A teacher who merely helps a student see where his or her action has or has not had the intended effect can be powerful in helping students learn to lead and succeed in enacting a vision.
For example, a student who is attempting to start a conversation about police brutality has a powerful and compelling vision. That student does not necessarily have the skills and aptitude to facilitate a group discussion on the topic. A teacher might help the student consider how to gather a group together, how to manage a facilitation, and how to help the student move towards the vision of a more sensitive and empathic community. Given the nature and challenge of the topic, teachers often worry about students’ capacity to have these moments go well. When supported with good planning and a discussion of the requisite skills, students can do great work at helping these moments be powerful learning events for the community.
This leads to the second point—students need to do the work. Talking about leadership in the abstract can be helpful, but rarely creates the durable learning of actually leading something. In the example of the conversation about police brutality, we can all imagine the ways in which that conversation might unfold; some good, some not-so-good. Still, the risk in the possibility of the not-so-good is little compared to the benefit from the learning that could, with the careful guidance of a teacher, unfold from the planning of and reflection on such an event. Allowing the student to lead in such a moment gives credibility to both this student and others who would choose to lead in similarly challenging moments. Letting one student do the work will empower others to follow.
Finally, when a student feels they are walking out onto the high wire of risky leadership, they take responsibility for where they are and what they do in that space. Almost independent of what a teacher does or doesn’t do, this moment on the high wire often is the most profound in what it allows students to learn. Helping students understand the wire and helping them to climb onto it is essential to teaching leadership. Teachers also set up inconspicuous safety nets, helping students, should they slip, to not fall too far. Making the nets inconspicuous is a bit of an art and an essential part in teaching leadership and aiding students to see the real risk in leading and to find the confidence to navigate these moments of challenge.
In short, let the kids do the work. Teachers help best by encouraging students to think through and plan a solution to a problem, by providing feedback about how the solution is unfolding, and by developing a chance for students to reflect upon what they have learned. When this happens, teachers truly are teaching leadership. Good luck out there; the students are counting on you.
Jeremy LaCasse is the Dean of Faculty for the Gardner Carney Leadership Institute, and served as the gcLi Executive Director from 2003 to 2009. Jeremy is the Assistant Headmaster at Taft School, a position he has held since 2015. Previously he served as the Headmaster at Kents Hill School and the Head of Senior School at Shady Side Academy. Jeremy earned a masters in Private School School Leadership from the Klingenstein Center, Teachers College at Columbia University.