Follow the Leader: Tips to Promote and Nurture Natural Leaders in the Classroom

As teachers we are constantly trying to bring out the best in our students. One of may passions is to encourage and see them excel in finding the leader within themselves. Here are a couple of tips that I have found to be helpful in cultivating natural leadership.

Tip #1: Give students a task that matches their skill set.
Once you find out what a child enjoys use that to get them to display their natural leadership abilities. You can conduct an assessment of what students like to do or pay particular attention to the type of activities that they enjoy during recess to determine a task. If a child is interested in a topic or task they will put in the extra effort to learn more about a topic and will be eager to share that information with others. The extra challenge will cause the student's skill set to come out and that student will take the lead. Such a student should be met where they are in an effort to change the way that they see themselves.

Tip #2: Assign a task to which no student in a group has prior knowledge.
The journey to figure out what needs to be done to complete an assignment can be very rewarding for the students. When no student has the upper hand, on the members of a group, creativity is awakened in each individual. Students will be more likely to take risks to come up with answers when there is no pressure. One can give students all of the tools to complete an assignment, but no directions to see how they will respond.