Empowering Student Leaders

Starting our ES Student Leadership program has been one of the most rewarding projects I have been involved in. We are into our 2nd year of the program and last year was the first year our school ever had an ES Student Leadership program.

My colleague Nicole (Grade 5 teacher) approached me about it last year, I was more than excited to jump on board. I had been trying to get a student leadership program going for several years but the timing (plus the pandemic) wasn't right. I also just needed a HR teacher who was passionate about starting the program.

We structured the program for Grades 4 and 5 students with the following goals:

• Provide more opportunities for student leadership

• Creating opportunities for more student voice from classrooms-Communication link

• Help to actualize SEL (social emotional) Character Strong program

• Develop service learning

• Collaborating with other divisions around spirit days or other projects 

• Improve school spirit and community

We had a vision to have students do our Morning Announcements every morning over the PA system and we wanted them to lead our ES Assemblies. Beyond that, we wanted them to have lots of student agency (voice and choice) and come up with solutions to problems around the school.

We had students write applications and then had classes vote on 2 students to represent their class. We had over 80 students apply for those 25 spots. We decided to have semester 1 and semester 2 leaders to give more access for those students to participate.

During our first year, student leaders did some amazing things.

They:

• Did Morning Announcements each morning

• Led ES assemblies (MCs, dances, games and more!)

• Did 2 different service learning initiatives including food drives for flood victims and bike donations

• Changed the cafeteria menu to include their favorite foods

• Added more sports equipment for recess

• Designed their own custom Student Leader tshirts

• Became role models for behavior around the school!

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Here's our first ES Assembly in our new theater:

Now, we are into our 2nd year and it is even better this year! I can't wait to see what our leaders accomplish!