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Random Leadership Experiences

When I went camping last week, I met an older gentleman who teaches two leadership classes at a local high school. To hear him talk about his experiences brought back memories, to be sure. Last year, in fact, was the first year in quite some time that I did not teach leadership myself. In the four years I taught leadership, I experienced the uniqueness of a class in which students organize and execute school-wide events, with teacher guidance. I found a few unpublished posts about a few of those events, found below.

Post #1
My leadership class hosted its first rally yesterday. It didn't go horribly, but it didn't go well, either. The best I can say is that this year's first rally was more organized and enjoyable than last year's first rally. On the whole, the games went smoothly, once they got started; but the issue was the contestants' confusion about how to play. We used demonstrators, but it didn't help much when it came to the contestants themselves playing. Part of the issue was that there was somewhat of a power struggle between students. At one point, for example, the lead for one of the games began to tell one of the contestants-- abruptly and perhaps rudely-- what to do, a move that led that contestant to quit the game before it even started. Fortunately, he came back.

On the positive side, all leadership students knew what they were supposed to do. It was just a matter of helping explain the games to contestants more clearly next time. All told, in fact, the rally could have been worse (I've seen events where students begin to put themselves and others in danger by playing a little too rough), and if the worst consequence is a few bored students, then it can't have gone all that bad. It was certainly a learning experience, though, and next rally, I plan to add a few safeguards to keep things moving.

The most important understanding I took from this event is that I can see now that I've learned to be less anxious about the outcome of these kinds of events. In fact, I found myself calmer about the rally (and, consequently, less concerned about my reputation as the leadership teacher) than I was last year. I wondered whether this relative indifference led to a less organized rally, and truth be told, it may have.

Post #2
I didn't mean for it to turn out this way, but I created some unnecessary controversy at school a few weeks ago. My leadership class organized a spirit week, which means that students dress up each day according to the theme of that day. "College Day" was on Monday, "Twin Day" on Tuesday, and "Sports Day" on Thursday, for example. Since Wednesday was Halloween, we assigned that day to be "Black and Orange Day." At some point, however, "Black and Orange Day" was reinterpreted as "Halloween Day." Some students must have thought they could wear Halloween costumes, which led the principal to state that only black and orange would be allowed. I agreed with him. Allowing costumes would have created unneeded distractions.

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