Spreading the Word while Growing Leadership

With over 25 students on our Student Leadership Council at Big Walnut Middle School, it is essential to spread the workload around as many hands make light work.  There is another reason as well, getting everyone involved helps each individual connect to the collective vision.  This year, BWMS has been lucky to incorporate our students in our community partnerships.  In fact, the word incorporate just does not give them justice as to the work they put into making community connections... the student leaders designed the conversations, crafted connections, delivered heart-felt claims and sold the message!  Here are a few tips for you as you help provide feedback to student leaders designing messages and meetings with community partners:

1. Clarify Meeting Format

Leadership Council at Chamber of Commerce

One quick method we have used at BWMS (and many other places) is to identify whether or not we are preparing for an Elevator, Escalator or Stairway conversation.  This mental image helps all of us format how long we can take with a group before asking for commitment to support our BWMS Service Day.  As an entire BWMS Student Council, we discussed which items from our project should be included into each of messages and the benefits and drawbacks of having either too little or too much information for community partnerships to buy into our goals and mission.  I wish you could have been at the meeting when our kids were discussing these items.  WOW, I felt as if I could have been sitting around a custom business table in leather chair and technology galore.  On the other hand, I was among 13 and 14 year old bright minds with great ideas, expression and passion.  Collectively, we were able to articulate our main points and a main method for delivery our message and obtaining feedback and commitments from our partnerships with authentic and mutual benefits.  In addition, our Student Leadership Council was able to further extend and define their common language to support further synergy and laser focus.

2. Identify Student Roles
Big Walnut Middle School has had over 12 community partner meetings already with more scheduled as we work towards our first BWMS Service Day in April.  Let me share thanks for just a few of our partners: BWLS Board of Education, Sunbury/Galena Chamber of Commerce, Sunbury Lions Club, Sunbury Chiropractic & Ace Hardware, Village of Sunbury, United Way of Delaware County, Sunbury Historical Society, Sunbury Community Library, Sunbury Friends Who Share, Project Healing Waters and our very own BWMS Staff.  With each of these meetings, we would identify 2-3 Student Leadership Council members who would help communicate the overall vision of our Service Day.  We found it the most efficient and effect to identify a WHY person, a HOW person, and a CONNECT person.  The WHY person was responsible for communicating why Big Walnut wants to pursue service learning with our entire student body.  They would research and communicate the benefits of community service.  The HOW person then would share with the community partner the process and timeline for creating service site teams at BWMS.  They included some details and were capable of answering some detail questions about the project.  Finally, the CONNECT person would do more research about the potential community partner and provide one or two possible related service ideas to start the conversation as to how BWMS could help.

3. Practice Before Others
There are two reasons that we made sure to practice our conversations before we went into any community partnership meeting.  The first is obvious, this helps the students ease their nerves.  Middle School students will be nervous, especially if they are standing in front of business and community leaders.  Compliment them and provide specific and meaningful feedback.  I view this feedback as just as important as the teachers should provide students within the classroom.  Specific and timely feedback helps raise the level of expectation and clarify areas of improvement.  The second benefit of practicing your partnership meetings before others is that it helps others within your organization buy into the vision from the students.  I frequently would pull in some of our teaching staff who typically would not see our BWMS Student Leadership Council members in action and allow them to provide feedback.  The students loved hearing the positive feedback from their teachers and the teachers gained such a better perspective as to why and how Service Day will end of having a tremendous impact on the climate and culture of our school.

4. Turn them Loose!
One of the hardest things for adults from schools implementing student voice and choice projects like the BWMS Service Day is to keep their mouths shut.  All of our staff leaders at BWMS work really hard to turn the students loose.  When questions come from community partners, give the wait time!  Trust me when I say...Trust your Student Leadership!  They will far pass your expectations and ultimately win over any community partner because of their passion, vision and drive for a better world through service.

Casting a Collective Vision

After building a cohesive team, the next step in Student Leadership is to cast a collective vision.  Defining the goal for a group is essential as this will set the course and empower long standing work for your student leaders.  We all know that there a difference between having a group of kids get together versus a team of students with one collective dream.  Let me expand upon this idea by using common language from athletics.  We often here the difference between a good team and a championship team include phrases like "we really came together" or "we were like a family" as they pursued and accomplished their team goals.  These same principles can be applied to the development of a Student Leadership Team.  These quotes below help capture the importance of taking individual leaders at your school and making an unstoppable force:

1. "Individual commitment to a group effort--that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work." --Vince Lombardi
2. "Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." --Michael Jordan
3. "Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results." --Andrew Carnegie
4. "Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much." --Helen Keller
5. "Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability." --Patrick Lencioni

After reading all of these great quotes from people who were able to accomplish great works with others, we must ask ourselves... What are some primary principles when casting a collective vision?  We all know that we cannot take a group of middle school student leaders and place them in a room without any guidance and they magically come out with a well crafted plan to accomplish a collective goal.  They need a little more direction.  Therefore, middle schools staff leaders must take the initiative chart a course for successful collaboration and incorporate a gradual release of control to the students as they become more confident and self-sustaining. Here are some points to ponder:

1. Clarity
What do you want your Student Leadership Team to become?  In our case at Big Walnut Middle School, our staff leaders had already charted the Mission of each of our student leadership organizations with an overarching Mission of the Student Leadership Committee to inspire and guide social influence for students.  The adults identified our strength of service-minded students at our school and dreamed about how the collective empathy of our students could have a tremendous local, regional and global impact. Therefore, early in our work we clarified our observations with compliments to our students with specific examples of how they have impacted their world through service and started to paint the picture for 600 individuals at Big Walnut Middle School unified in service to others.  Think about... 600 people, 3.5 hours of service in one day.  What could we accomplish by unifying our efforts?

2. Connections
In order to strengthen our students perspective of service learning and assist in the development of a common language, we spent some time in reflection and conversation about the Corporation for National & Community Service Issue Brief on the Impact of Service Learning.  Students teams read through the article and had deep discussions about how service learning could impact our school.  The students used post-it notes to identify all of the benefits of service.  These conversations and connections would become really important to the future work of sending out our student leader teams to cast the vision to other students within our school and partners from the community (more to come in future posts).

3. Collaborative
I love watching student statements change from "I" to "We" when talking about student leadership initiatives.  For school leaders, this is an outward measure that ensures you are making progress towards developing a team with a collective vision. One way explicitly show student leaders that they are starting to act and think alike is by taking those post-it notes about why students should participate in service learning and categorize them as a group.  A lot of tech tools can help with this process (wall wisher or padlet) or you can just go old school with post-it notes.  Either way, students can visually see their ideas becoming one.

4. Communicate
Publishing your vision solidifies the team.  Make it a big deal because it is a very important step.  This the first opportunity for your student leadership team to tell others about their means and methods to reach their goals. Big Walnut Middle School used social media to highlight our progress and share perspectives (@BigWalnutMS on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram).

5. Celebrate
My last suggestion from today is just to celebrate. Let your students know how pride you are of them and their accomplishments. At the same time, talk about how much they will accomplish and how large of an impact they will have on your school and community. Enjoy the ride, smile and laugh and celebrate every step towards the fulfillment of your collective vision!

Building a Cohesive Team





Don't Spill the Beans

Whether preparing an athletic team, starting a new Project Based Learning unit in your classroom or bringing together a new Professional Learning Community, it is essential to take some time at the beginning to establish a cohesive team.  We can not expect that teamwork will just happen.  Educational leaders must be purposeful in the development of collaborative skills that will promote and support communication, creativity and critical thinking within a leadership initiative.  I feel as if there are few major activities that support the building a cohesive team:

1. Team Building Exercises
When you hear the words "Ice Breakers," what comes to mind?  I have always been intrigued as to how adults and young adults respond to these tricky initiatives.  I can anticipate some eye rolls and fist pumps out there in cyber land.  I for one have always enjoyed and incorporated these challenge by choice components when establishing a team.  I feel as if one of the main ingredients to pull off team building activity is that the leader of the initiative must fully buy in and share with everyone the purpose of the games.  Believe me, do not underestimate the power of Team Building Initiatives as they establish shared experiences and simulated trials which ultimately build a foundation of trust.  The Leadership Council at BWMS started with a "Don't Spill The Beans" initiative as shown by the picture above.  During this activity, you should divide into teams and share the task is to carry the can of beans on a bandana without touching the can while they move to touch objects.  Participants are not allowed to touch the cup directly or through the bandana and the bandana must remain flat at all times.  You may have to make changes to the initiative as the game progresses to increase difficulty if things are too easy or vice versa.  Processing after the game should center on how well did the group work together in this activity and why was it important to have everyone on the same page?  These questions will become very important as you start to establish your shared Norms.
 2. What is our Goal?
At the first meeting it is essential to cast the vision for the purpose of your leadership council. The team will naturally ask - Why am I here and What do I need to do?  Very early in the process we shared that with our students the mission of the Big Walnut Middle School Leadership Council is to inspire and guide the social influence of the student body at BWMS.  Within this mission we identified two main events in which the students will take full responsibility for contributing to our school in a positive way... 1. Anti-Bullying Day and 2. Service Day.  These landmark events helped clarify the roles and responsibilities of the leadership council while giving a purpose to each meeting.  While planning these events, BWMS will increase student voice and choice through student leadership.

3. Shared Team Norms
Establishing team norms is another very important concept that is often overlooked when first establishing a team.  Frequently, team protocols begin with establishing norms but far too many people do not see the importance of taking the time to do so.  I feel people, even adults, think they are better at being a team player than they may actually be and therefore underestimate their conflict resolution capabilities.  For the BWMS Leadership Council, we started by having all of our team members Think, Pair, Share ideas and perspectives that should guide our meetings and procedures.  After some feedback from the group, we ended with the following list to guide our work this year:

• Be Respectful to Others
• Be Open to Other Ideas
• Be Present & Attentive
• Be the Representatives of BWMS
• Synergize & Have Fun

4. Constantly Revisiting Our Mission and Methods
One last point of emphasis when establishing a Cohesive Leadership Team is to constantly revisit your mission and methods set out to help achieve your team goals.  As we continue our meetings throughout the school year in preparation for the Anti-Bullying and Service Days at BWMS, we frequently revisit our Norms.  In addition, as your team gets deep into the details of planning, take time out to throw in some new team building initiates to keep everyone fresh and having fun.  The mission and methods are the cornerstones of keeping your team unified so Together Everyone Achieves More.

Selecting a Student Leadership Team

Big Walnut Middle School leaders began 2015-16 with a desire to increase student voice and choice through Student Leadership. After organizing the various student organizations within the school, we needed to reflect on our process of selecting students to serve on our leadership council. Here are some priorities and criteria to consider:



BWMS Average Eagle

1. Diversity
It is very important that leadership teams reflect your population. We must ensure that all students have representation on leadership organization. Athletes, Musicians, Artists, Skater-Dudes and Brainiacs. One of the best ways to make sure you are spreading selection around to all social groups within your school is to walk the lunch room. If you notice a lot of your students sample is sitting together, you need to go back to the drawing board. At BWMS, we had representatives from three different organizations (student council, athletic council, and the SOAR PBIS committee) provide the foundation of our team. We then added some at large representatives to further balance our team. Take a look at the BWMS Average Eagle that our staff created this year to help us think about personalization in the classroom.  Your leadership team should reflect your school population.

2. Grade Distribution 

This was a tough one for us. We knew we wanted to start with more 8th grade students than 7th grade students but did not have a perfect formula for the percentages. Here is where 7/8 buildings may struggle because we have a full year of experiences with the 8th grade class yet limited experiences with our new 7th grade faces.   In the future we hope to get some additional feedback from our Intermediate School but MS vs IS can be considerably different.  My recommendation is that schools should wait to get some feedback from their teachers once the 7th grade teachers get to know their students a little more.  It was for this reason that we started out our leadership council with just the 8th grade students and then added 7th grade students mid-way through the 1st quarter so that we had 75% of our students from 8th grade and 25% of our students from 7th grade on our student leadership council.
3. Size
If your school is like mine, you will have a tough time keeping the number of students on your Leadership Council less than 25.  I guess it is a great problem that we have so many great students that it is supper difficult to limit this group.  I hate saying no to any student in this regard but you have to keep the group manageable so that everyone stays involved.  You school will have to make your own decisions but BWMS decided to error on the side of adding more students than keeping the team too small.  Personal preference as well as our desire to give more opportunities to more students.
4. Teacher Feedback
Before making the final decisions and sharing the great news with your students and their parents, get some other teacher leaders within your school to double check the list.  It is best to get other perspectives and making sure that the final team is reflective of your desires for Student Leadership within your School.

Selection of your Student Leadership Team is essential.  Staff and school leaderships should expend just as much effort and thought into the selection of their school student leaders as a head coach may put into the captains of their team.  The group dynamic, focus and vision of student leadership within your school will lay the foundation for much success in student voice and choice within our schools!

Student Leadership - Where to begin?



So your school is interested in starting some programs and activities with student leaders, where do you begin?  Is there a "right" way to get started? We hope that BWMS can share some of their experiences with this process and help you avoid some pitfalls.

Our journey began in the summer of 2015 as a few teacher leaders with Student Voice & Choice as a passion gathered in an off campus setting to discuss how we could increase Student Leadership in the follow school year.  This was a brainstorming session as to how to structure student leadership opportunities beginning in August.  We started by reading and discussing The Disenfranchised Changemakers by Zak Malamed (leader in #StuVoice).  Great conversations followed as our team dreamed about how we could further support student leadership at Big Walnut Middle School.   Questions to consider during this process:

1. How should the school structure student leadership within the school?
2. How do we organize the adult responsibilities to keep everyone involved?
3. How do we balance 7th & 8th grade leadership in our 7/8 building? 
4. How can we instill processes to obtain a diverse group of students for leadership?
5. How can our structures support the ongoing development of students at BWMS?
6. How can we define the mission of each sub group, student make up and selection and primary activities? (see chart below)

We left this day with a clear understanding of the organization of Leadership at BWMS with primary adults identified to support each organization.  We have high trust in our students and know that when the Adults release some of our power to Students in schools...Great Things Will Happen!  Schools must capitalized on the high value of Social Justice in MS students, we must capture and harness the energy from our youth, a fresh look at the big world.  Check out our statements below:

Big Walnut Middle School will empower students with the Student Council, SOAR Committee, and Athletic Council synergizing efforts to organize and plan a wide variety of events for all students this year.  With representatives from each team on the Leadership Council, all leadership development initiatives at BWMS will continue to support the whole student and encourage student engagement and student voice.  Overall, student choice and student voice are at the core of the climate of inclusiveness that support all students at Big Walnut Middle School.

Student Leadership at Big Walnut Middle School

 

 

Student Leadership

 

Increasing Student Choice & Student Voice through Student Leadership

As the calendar year adds another number and bitter cold winds enter the great Buckeye State, student and school leaders look to continue our focus on student choice and student voice in 2016.  Research shows that a strong link between giving students choices and their intrinsic motivation for doing a task, their overall performance on the task, and their willingness to accept challenging tasks (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008).  Classroom teachers continue to work in collaboration to chase after personalization within the classroom.  

 In addition, Big Walnut Middle School values student voices in 2016.  Research from the Qualia Institute suggest that less than half of students in secondary education in America feel that they have a voice in decision making in their schools (Summary Report 2012).  When students feel they have a voice, they are more likely to feel invested and engaged in their schools; when students believe teachers are listening to their voices, mutual trust and respect are likely to flourish; when students’ voices are heard and acted upon in schools, the schools stand to become more relevant to the students’ lives and are more likely to be seen as serving their needs.  Big Walnut Middle School continues to empower students with the Leadership Council, Athletic Counsel, Student Counsel and SOAR Committee organizing and planning a wide variety of events for all students this year.  These student leadership development initiatives will continue to support the whole student at BWMS and encourage student engagement and student voice.  For example, the Student Leadership Committee is deep in the planning process of working with community partners in the organization of the first BWMS Service Day.  Overall, student choice and student voice are at the core of the climate of inclusiveness and support for all students at Big Walnut Middle School.

Keep checking back as we continue to share more specific examples about increasing student voice and choice at Big Walnut Middle School through Student Leadership in the creation of a Whole School Service Day!

 



Welcome!

Greetings!  My name is Josh Frame and I an assistant principal at Big Walnut Middle School.  I taught Biology for 7 years before making the move to educational administration.  I have a passion for teaching and learning as well as school improvement.  I hope to update the blog throughout this years as Big Walnut Middle School continues to strive for academic achievement.