Tag: leadership

Should High Schoolers Be Able to Vote

Students in Lowell, Mass., are petitioning for the right to vote in their town. They argue that voting is an integral part of the civics they’re learning in high school, and they should be able to learn about, and vote on, issues in the communities where they grew up, and not have to wait until they’re in college.

Their campaign gained support of local politicians, cause the passage of a state law allowing the town to lower the voting age and even got a constitutional law professor (Lawrence Tribe) to write a letter supporting their case to the Massachusetts’ Secretary of State. They’re now organizing a ballot initiative for 2013.

Dinner and a Show

At the end of each year, the Middle School puts on Dinner and a Show. As has become traditional, the students performed a play for the Show, and, for dinner, this year they did a Mediterranean themed meal: lasagna, baklava and some sort of cherry drink. The overwhelming feedback from the not necessarily impartial audience, of family members and faculty, seems to be that food and performance were quite a success. And, I have to say, the same applies from my point of view as well. The students did a great job putting everything together and pulling off the performance.

We usually work on Dinner and a Show for the entire second cycle. The first five weeks revolve around choosing the play, learning lines, and planning the meal. Our director, for the second year running, Ms. Jessica Parker, did a wonderful job with the adaptation, staging and working with the kids.

I was extremely lucky this year that I had two students who were really interested in the project. One, an eight grader, had been planning on taking charge since last year. The other, a seventh grader, really wanted to do the food. What was really nice was that, most of the time, they were the ones pushing me to get stuff done.

I’d ask questions like, “Have you started on the playbill yet?”

“Yes,” they’d reply, with exaggerated patience, “We’re still waiting for you to help with the images.”

The sixth week of the cycle, our immersion week, was dedicated entirely to the event; lots of practicing and food preparation. That’s when the students really shone. We had some help making the baklava (thanks Dr. Jen), but the next day, which was spent assembling two (and eventually three) types of lasagna, I only had a couple queries about what to use to boil water for the pasta (an electrical skillet works fairly well).

Everyone had a part in the play, but were also involved in setting things up. Apart from the cooks, there were separate crews for lighting and the backdrops. Once the crews got going, I spent most of my time staying out of the way. While I’d so like to jump in and help with everything, this is the way I think the middle school should work. I count this week as a really good one.

Leadership and competitive games

“Treat a person as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat him as he could be, and he will become what he should be.”
–Jimmy Johnson

As much as I want to offer my students near-autonomy for at least a small part of the day, I am finding it necessary to reinforce the lessons of the classroom during PE. Physical education is an important part of a holistic education not just for the fact that healthy bodies lead to healthy minds, but because it offers another domain for students to develop their leadership skills.

I’ve found that not everyone who is great in the classroom will be great on the playing field, so students who are often learning from their peers when they’re inside, get a chance to teach and lead others. Often however, because they are unused to it, they need a little guidance to recognize the reversal of roles.

It is also interesting to note that some students who are great at peer-teaching the academics can get really riled up on the field and loose all sense of perspective, forgetting those carefully taught collaboration skills. This is particularly true when we play competitive games and they have to balance competition and collaboration. Fortunately, there is a well established term (even if not gender neutral) that sums up appropriate behavior in competition, sportsmanship.