Leadership Starts in Kindergarten
Sweet Kindergarten Boys
at Graceland
When my 4-year old twins, Emerson and Xander, were in kindergarten I got to visit their classroom. I noticed how many of the challenges we see in leadership teams have roots early on in the kindergarten classroom. I have to say, my children’s teacher was brilliant. I watched her blend great facilitation, inquiry, and relationship skills while keeping the interest of 17 busy 4 year olds for an hour. I saw her demonstrate great leadership skills herself, but I also saw her teaching leadership skills—something I work hard to teach leaders to do. Here’s what I saw:
She has a busy classroom and sets it up in such a way that the children are rarely in trouble. She doesn’t keep them sitting too long or chastise them for talking. She creates time in the schedule for them to talk to each other—she believes in their relationships with each other. She fits the learning into their natural flow. She doesn’t keep herself at the center of their learning—she creates opportunities for them to learn in a variety of ways—she strategizes how they can learn from a variety of people. One of these opportunities is the third graders who come in to read to the kindergarteners once a week—they have a buddy system and they love it. This is teaching two skills: mentoring and helping others, and learning from others. She had another staff member come in and work with the children around the topic of responsibility. There was a book reading and a heated discussion led by the staff member, and I saw the teacher talking about responsibility during the time the kids got their coats and boots off and hung them up, and again when a child spilled a tub of small toys and they all helped pick them up.
During circle time, I watched this teacher do 3 things that blew me away: the first was an inquiry session with my son Emerson. She asked him to figure out which of the children was missing. When they come into the classroom, they have a card they put in a hanging chart that has clear plastic to read all the names. They sort—girls on the right, boys on the left. She asked Emerson to look at the chart and see whether it was a boy or a girl who was missing. This seemed easy until I noticed that Claire’s name was on the boy’s side. Emerson deduced that a boy was missing and she sent him to look at the remaining card—to check his work. He was noticeably embarrassed when he found Ethan’s name. He came back and she encouraged him to keep looking to see why the name wasn’t what he expected. It took him awhile (I actually was shocked that he could read 17 children’s names) but he found the problem and was so proud. What she demonstrated was allowing him to be uncomfortable to facilitate his learning and believing in him even when it was hard. He learned that by looking longer he could figure it out and could help the class.
She also created an excellent environment for Xander to learn about strategy. She asked Xander to come up with a strategy for counting all the children in the class—he chose to have each child sit down as he counted them. She could have told him to just count the children, however, her question took the learning to a higher level and allowed him to learn about strategy while he practiced counting—something we focus on with leaders all the time.
The final thing that has stayed with me years later was when they stopped to dance. She had a great song on a cd player—the children chose which one—and they all just stopped their activities and danced. It was fun and the image of her dancing with them will stay with me for a long time. Sometimes I find myself being too reserved, holding back, trying to pretend I am cool. The image of her dancing joyfully with the children was a lesson of living life to the fullest and giving herself completely to her profession—to me in the land of leadership, this is perhaps the greatest lesson of all.
This article was written about Lesley Tiringer at George R. Allen Elementary School. Her name is published with her permission.
