Leadership Background

"We cannot always build the future for our youth, but we can build our youth for the future." Franklin Delano Roosevelt


LEADERSHIP QUALITIES
Ten Ways to Identify a Promising Person

The most gifted athletes rarely make good coaches. The best violinist will not necessarily make the best conductor. Nor will the best teacher necessarily make the best head of the department.

So it's critical to distinguish between the skill of performance and the skill of leading the performance, two entirely different skills.

It's also important to determine whether a person is capable of learning leadership. The natural leader will stand out. The trick is identifying those who are capable of learning leadership over time.

Excerpted from:
Fred Smith, LEADERSHIP JOURNAL; Fall 1996, Vol. XVII, No. 4, Page 30)

For the rest of the article go to:
http://www.nsba.org/sbot/toolkit/LeadQual.html

Leadership: Those qualities of personality which are of greatest assistance in obtaining confidence, respect, obedience, and loyal

BRAINSTORMING ABOUT LEADERSHIP
Taking a large block of time to engage in the "Brainstorming About Leadership" activity will allow for learning to take place that is enexpected or not even anticipated by the teacher. Its during these spontaneous thoughts or reflections that teacher and student become one in the learning process. Its the stuff that "Breakthrough Learning" is made of!

Here is a suggested approach:

1) Ask students to share phrases or words that describe a strong leader. Write each suggestion on a card in thibk felt pen. Encourage discussion about the ideas.You should have at least 30 cards up.

2) Tape each card on the wall around the room.

3) Leave these cards up throughout the project. When students are deciding on their criteria, encourage dialogue about the criteria as they stand around the cards. Remind students that they will need to share an example of a time their leader demonstrated that quality. This part of the activity can be very challenging for the students as they are required to justify their choice of criteria.

4) Having the cards up will emphesize the variety of traits present in leaders.

5) Once the students have finished their project their work can be displayed ona bulletin board with these cards taped around the perimeter of the bulletin board.Remember to include a copy of the assignment sheet on the bulletin board so that the viewer will have a clear understanding of the process that the students went through to reach their final draft. I took digital pictures of ecah student, printed them and displayed them in a quilt formation along with the writing and the leadership criterion cards. It made a very effective display of student learning.