Education: Student Leadership Begins From Within
 

In solving some of the current challenges facing American public education, schools, communities, and organizations promote student leadership in middle school and high school as an after school or supplemental program. Many of these programs center around community service.

Bringing awareness about the community and helping the community is a good thing, but effective student leadership, just as adult leadership, should begin with self-leadership.

To see if your student leadership program is really developing self-leaders who can achieve the results that you know are possible, consider the following 20 questions.

  Do your students or young people have:
  • Preponderance of excuses?
  • Lack of personal accountability (i.e. It’s not my fault.)?
  • Communication problems?
  • Personality conflicts?
  • Difficulty staying motivated?
  • Inconsistency with respect to ownership of personal responsibility and personal choices?
  • Unacceptable results?
  • Limited focus and direction?
  • Time management problems?
  • Reactive rather than proactive thinking (i.e. A follow the crowd/peer pressure)?
  • Can't-do attitudes?
  • Poor work or learning habits?
  • Inability to work as teams?
  • Failure to consistently perform quality work or high academic performance?
  • Fear of making decisions?
  • Lack of initiative or "Out of the Box" thinking?
  • Resistant to diversity of thought (close-mind mentality)?
  • Lack of values demonstrated through inconsistent actions?
  • At risk behavior such as poor attendance, high levels of suspension or explusion?
  • No post secondary experience or career plan?

If you answered yes to more any of these questions, then how can your students effectively work together in community service? Doesn't it not make more sense to develop student leaders who consistently demonstrate high values and achieve their goals?

Student leadership must begin with self-leadership because you can’t lead anyone else until you first can lead yourself. Also, doesn’t it make sense to develop those positive desires to be successful, to be aware of others and most importantly to be 100% responsible for the choices that are made through individual actions?