We have a Professional Development Day today and so we held our Remembrance Day Assembly yesterday. It was completely organized by our student leadership club. My only contribution was a suggested theme, and it was shared because I was asked. Beyond that the agenda, setup, sound, performances, and every word spoken was done by students.
The main organizer, in Grade 12, is an exceptional writer, and I could hear his voice, his excellent vocabulary, weaved through the presentations. But he didn’t speak, he sat with the team working on the sound system.
I didn’t get to hear the rehearsal like I’d hoped, but one of our Grade 10’s assured me that it went really well. This was obvious in the assembly, because everything went smoothly. The performers were mostly from Grade 10’s, all future leaders capable of taking on running the event next year.
There’s a difference between student leaders who help a teacher run an event, and student leaders who take full responsibility for an event. There is an authenticity that comes with full control. Of course the students need to be ready for this. Putting them fully in charge but unprepared is not a recipe for success, but there is another side to this.
What if things go wrong? Well, there are different kinds of going wrong. If a student is playing an instrument and misses a note, that’s not a big deal. If a student says something inappropriate in a formal assembly, or obviously doesn’t take the event seriously, that’s different. If someone forgets a line, that’s different than if the event feels ad hoc and unplanned.
When students are ready, they need to be provided with authentic opportunities to lead. And when they step and truly lead, it’s impressive to see what they can do. One of the highlights for me, a thing that really made me feel impressed, was that the main organizer did the same thing we did. He stepped back, work done before the event even started, and he let the younger students MC, he let his team run the show. He distributed the leadership the same way it was distributed to him.
