Leadership Starts in Kindergarten
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...
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