If I could form a hierarchy from my educational philosophy, at the top would be critical thinking, ethics and leadership. I believe that the teacher plays a vital role in fostering these ideas in the classroom. Through modeling the teacher is able to develop good habits that form the foundation to a student’s intellect. Leadership is a difficult concept to model because of its inherent social nature. Group dynamics, physical atmosphere and even the very activity have very complex effects of the development of leadership roles. How can you model good leadership? Well it is obvious that there are some fairly evident leadership aspects of teaching. Trust and communication play a huge role in the classroom as also they do in groups. The teacher is the leader of a class. He must develop his learning community where its members are all oriented to a common goal of content mastery. A good leader also has an intuitive sense about what his team needs to be successful. Teachers must acquire this skill in order to meet the individual ability levels and learning styles of the students. I still am not sure if this is effective in developing leader in the classroom but it’s a start. The following is an idea that is the start of something that, I think has potential.
To work, a group activity has to have structure and, in my opinion, some quirkiness. It has to be developed through routines and procedures. When the teacher declares that it is time for a group activity, the students need to know what the procedure is. It has to be memorable to be effective. The following group activity model was designed to create an opportunity for leaders in the class to develop while also providing a light peer structured atmosphere for the students.
The idea is to have this be the default group activity model. Students will be placed in groups. These groups will stay the same for a period of time. For each group activity, there would always be a new group of leaders. Each group would be given a letter for its name but the military phonetic alphabet would be used. For example, the A group would be called Alpha. The leader for that group would be called Alpha leader. I think this has the right amount of quirkiness that the students would find enjoyable and easy to remember.
Each time the leaders would be chosen based on some criteria known only to me. It might be the highest scores on a recent test or the lowest scores. It might be the most improved students. Whichever reason, the ideas is to give everyone the opportunity to hold the position while also allowing some students to hold it more. It is these students who will become the leaders of the class. I would like to hear feedback about this idea. I don't know how I feel yet about some students getting more opportunities to hold the position. I could see an argument being that someone may want it but I might not feel that they are not a leader. This might affect their self efficacy and have negative effects on their performance.
Somehow, I would want leaders to be evaluated whether it is extra credit or an actual grade. It doesn't have to be this way but I want to establish some incentive for not only being a leader but also being a good leader. This also needs to be worked out.
So what would the leaders do? Well, like any good leader, they would be focused on the success of their group. In this case, learning a particular concept or completing an assignment would define the primary goal of the group as well as the leader. These would also be the objectives which would be assessed. The leaders would also be responsible for ensuring that their entire group understand all concepts. If not then they would assist the student, assign someone in their group to assist the student or make sure the student gets the appropriate help. The leaders would be responsible for delivering any directions given to them by the teacher.
These are just some thoughts but hopefully I can bring this together into something more concrete. I believe this is a good start on developing a more student directed classroom rather than a teacher directed on.
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