As soon as I became more involved in Service Learning at American International School of Johannesburg, I often observed the need for better leadership training amongst student leaders and mentees (deputy leaders) in different service projects, and in leadership positions such as in Student Council. I started to think about how and when students receive training for these positions, and how I could further develop our programmes to support and improve leadership.
I recently participated in a Global Issues Network (GIN) affiliated conference that focused on sharing successful service learning stories from schools all over Africa. It was truly an amazing experience. As a team, we could present a workshop on any service learning project that our school facilitates.
We decided that building leadership skills and traits to improve all programs and activities was our focus. We wanted student choice in what they wanted to learn and develop. Our survey provided data on which we could build our workshop based on students’ needs and wants. We built a student leadership handbook where we were able to provide tools and resources to our leaders and mentees in a workshop to ‘implement’ our leadership training prior to presenting at the summit. The feedback we received from participants in both workshops in Kenya and South Africa, reflected that the tools and resources were indeed helpful in developing student leadership. Participants were able to grow as leaders and share some of the tools with their teams to delegate leadership responsibilities.
My learning is that the development of leadership skills and traits is not ever done. We must continually develop our skills, dispositions and traits and share the responsibilities of leadership with our peers. At times, this can be quite frustrating, especially when you have delegated and the tasks are not completed to the standard to which you would like them to be achieved. Leadership requires empathy and patience to help mentor up and coming leaders to be able to successfully lead in projects. When delegating, one must know the skill sets and traits of team members. This helps with ensuring the right job is assigned to the right skill sets.
We have developed job descriptions as well as roles and responsibilities for specific positions within our leadership council. In being visible at assemblies, conducting a recognition assembly, service learning celebration, workshops and democratic election, we were able to put service learning leadership as sought after responsibility. How does your school develop student leadership?