I left the first face-to-face session with a sense of purpose that guided the development of my question in our second face-to-face session. While Montcrest’s student leadership program is quite established after 12 years running in this format, one of my intentions is to boost engagement in leadership in the junior years so that we can improve our students’ sense of responsibility to a community and continue to develop their sense of self through leadership opportunities. After reflection and support from the Uplift Collective, I finalized my question: How might we leverage student engagement and passion by creating a progressive leadership pathway that strengthens students’ sense of purpose and belonging within their community? Since then, I have begun actioning my steps by researching elementary schools who have a leadership program or offer leadership opportunities in order to connect with people who have similar roles to mine or whose roles encompass coordinating these programs.
Through discussions I have had at in-person sessions, I am also thinking about how I can improve my oversight of our leadership program. Recently, I accompanied a few of our grade 8s who hold various leadership roles to the CIS Thrive Student Leadership Conference. After participating in workshops led by high school students, our grade 8s left the conference feeling invigorated and wanting to try make some changes at our school. As a result, I am hoping to leverage their interest and ideas to connect more with them and develop a smaller group of students who hold responsibility for bringing forward new ideas and keeping our student leaders more connected with each other so that we can develop deeper and more interesting leadership experiences and projects.
@mbarclay
Your How Might We question is incredibly well-crafted—it speaks directly to both engagement and purpose while reinforcing belonging. I love how you’re approaching this with a long-term vision by developing a progressive leadership pathway that builds student agency from the early years onward. This kind of intentionality will ensure that leadership is not just an isolated opportunity in Grade 8 but a growth journey that deepens over time.
Here are some next steps, resources, and ideas to help support your plan and give you concrete strategies to test and refine:
1️⃣ Building a Leadership Progression: What Might It Look Like?
A progressive leadership pathway should allow younger students to see themselves as future leaders while providing gradual responsibility over time. Here’s a sample progression that might help shape your thinking:
✅ Grades 1-3: Emerging Leaders
• Peer Helpers (supporting classroom routines, buddy system with younger students)
• Classroom “jobs” with real responsibility (e.g., kindness ambassador, environmental steward)
✅ Grades 4-6: Developing Leaders
• School-wide service projects (e.g., running food drives, community outreach initiatives)
• Student voice opportunities (e.g., participating in decision-making forums with older students)
✅ Grades 7-8: Empowered Leaders
• Lead student-driven clubs & initiatives
• Act as mentors for younger students in leadership development
• Plan and facilitate school events
Reflection Question: How might you create a visual or narrative journey that shows students where they are in their leadership growth and what’s next for them?
📌 Resource: Ontario Student Voice Framework (https://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/students/student_voice.html)
2️⃣ Strengthening Engagement: Leveraging Student Voice & Passion
You mentioned that your Grade 8s left the CIS Thrive Student Leadership Conference energized—this is a golden opportunity to deepen engagement.
🎤 Next Steps for Student Voice:
• Host a “Student Leadership Think Tank” where Grade 8 leaders can brainstorm how to implement their ideas.
• Create a leadership mentorship program where Grade 8s support Grade 6 students to prepare them for larger roles.
• Establish student-led leadership workshops where older students teach leadership skills to younger students (like what they experienced at the Thrive Conference).
📌 Resource: Student Leadership Practices Inventory (https://www.studentleadershipchallenge.com/)
3️⃣ Expanding Your Network: Connecting with Other Schools & Leadership Programs
Since you’re already researching how other schools run leadership programs, here are some specific networks and resources that might be valuable:
🌍 The Student Leadership Challenge (James Kouzes & Barry Posner)
• Framework for student leadership based on 5 key practices: Model the Way, Inspire a Shared Vision, Challenge the Process, Enable Others to Act, and Encourage the Heart.
• Resource: https://www.studentleadershipchallenge.com/
📌 Other Leadership Programs to Explore:
• National Student Leadership Conference (NSLC) – https://www.nslcleaders.org/
• Ontario’s Student Leadership Associations – https://osca.ca/student-leadership
• Character.org Leadership Development Tools – https://character.org/
Reflection Question: Who are 3-5 key educators you could reach out to in CAIS or CIS Ontario schools to compare notes on leadership pathways?
4️⃣ Oversight & Long-Term Sustainability: Making Leadership Embedded, Not Extra
You mentioned wanting to improve oversight of your leadership program. This is key to ensuring that leadership becomes woven into the culture of the school rather than an “add-on.”
💡 Ideas to Create More Sustainable Leadership Systems:
• Develop a Student Leadership Advisory Committee – A core group of students who help oversee leadership development.
• Create an Annual Leadership Summit – A school-wide event where student leaders train younger students.
• Introduce a Leadership Portfolio – A simple Google Doc or digital journal where students track their leadership experiences, growth, and reflections.
📌 Resource: Harvard’s Making Caring Common Initiative (https://mcc.gse.harvard.edu/) – Focuses on fostering leadership through ethical responsibility.
5️⃣ Next Steps: Bringing It All Together
To move from planning to action, here’s a suggested roadmap for the next few months:
✅ February-March:
• Host a Grade 8 Student Leadership Think Tank to capture their ideas.
• Begin connecting with other schools with leadership programs to benchmark strategies.
✅ April-May:
• Implement one pilot leadership initiative for younger grades (e.g., mentoring, cross-grade project).
• Develop an oversight framework to document leadership development.
✅ June:
• Gather reflections from students and teachers on what worked.
• Build a formalized leadership roadmap for next year.
Final Thoughts & Looking Ahead
Melody, I love how intentional you are about fostering student engagement and ensuring leadership is built progressively over time. The fact that you’re incorporating student voice, interdisciplinary collaboration, and external research shows that this will be a well-rounded initiative.
Your next challenge might be deciding where to start first—perhaps with student voice, a leadership progression framework, or making connections with other schools. Whatever it is, keep testing and iterating as you go!
Looking forward to seeing you at the 3rd face-to-face session at Montcrest School, where we can refine and iterate on your action plan further!
Best,
Justin
Hi Melody,
Great post and I’m excited to discuss with you some of the steps you aim to take between now and May and setting some realistic goals. I echo Justin’s steps he laid out in his comment. Looking forward to chatting on Friday!
Hi Melody! I love how inspired your students were from their experience at THRIVE. There’s special magic in peer-to-peer workshops that way.
I’m going to go ahead and disagree with AI-Justin here, and say that I think there is an assumption baked into the wording of your HMW question and that simplifying it might unlock some creativity for you to find possible solutions.
It sounds like the most important part is the last part:
How might we strengthen students’ sense of purpose and belonging within their community?
Does any viable solution have to leverage student engagement and passion? Does it require a progressive leadership pathway? If yes, that’s the track to follow. If not, these can still be helpful tools, but maybe they aren’t the only ones.
Growing student leadership in the junior years is such an important step in building the leaders of tomorrow. I suspect some young students only have one definition of leadership and that is the person in the front of the room doing most of the talking. Some students may not believe they have what it takes to lead. If they can realize leadership comes in an array of different forms they may start to see themselves in a leadership position. Sometimes leadership is found in the person that first follows, or is organized and on task, or simply shows an engagement in the activity in the room. You don’t need to be in charge to lead. I’m excited to see where this action plan takes you.
Bob