Summer is a great time to contemplate ideas or strategies you may wish to implement next year. In this context, I’d encourage everyone to consider how they develop student leadership in their programs.
My guest this week is student leadership guru Duane Huff. While Duane’s focus is high school marching band, his insight on student leadership can benefit any band, orchestra, or choir program.
We talk about how student leadership can be applicable at any grade level, what student leadership really means, and what the benefits can be for students (and the world) and much more.
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In This Episode, You’ll Learn:
- How student leadership be scaled for all k-12 students
- To foster individual leadership on a day-to-day basis
- To help students discover the desire to lead their peers
- What are the real benefits to you and your students
Team Leadership Games and Activities
Here’s a big list of games and activities that you can put to good use in your program.
Download it for free!
Key Takeaways
Use stories to teach leadership
If you have a story of when you were where they are, tell it. Tell students about your struggles. It makes you seem more human to them and makes them feel like it’s okay to make some mistakes. Stories and videos can help clarify what it means to be a leader.
You can start teaching leadership with any student, any age, any situation
The sooner you can start, the better. The essence of leadership is that it’s not about us. It’s about others. We can teach students right up front to be selfless, to give, to think beyond themselves, to serve, to do things for other people – and to do it enthusiastically. If we get them in the pattern and habit early, they grow up expecting to be a servant and to give and to help.
We’re teaching students to include – to not alienate, ostracize, bully, pick on, or gossip. We’re instilling in them – from the very beginning – that they have a responsibility, that they are influential and that they have the power to uplift and be a light in someone else’s life.