Leader-Owned Classrooms at Briggs Elementary School ment. We created it together, recite it regularly, and it really does keep us focused on what matters most, whether we’re in the classroom or not. Our teacher has hers posted right there by her desk and, of course, we each have our own too! “On the whiteboard right now you can see our shared learning target—we call it our end in mind. That helps us stay present in the learning with each other. And then you can see that we’re using the Brainstormer in our learning right now. It’s just one of the leadership and quality tools we use all the time. See, over there, yesterday in math we worked with a Venn Diagram.” “Some other things we do in here are work on our goals–we call them WIGs® because they’re wildly important. We keep track of them in our Leadership Notebooks®. That’s actually our WIG wall right there. It has our class goals and lead measures and how we’re tracking them.” Imagine if students around the world felt safe, welcome, and had a sense of belonging at school. At Briggs we have leader-owned classrooms. In such a classroom, students are very involved in creating a leadership culture. Picture the student ambassador for a class offering up a tour to a visitor. Imagine the student pointing out the features that make the space a leadership classroom. Would it sound like this? “Welcome to our classroom! I’ll be your guide today. I’ll show you what makes our classroom a leadership classroom! “Probably the first thing you notice here is that there’s a LOT of student work on the walls, right? This is OUR classroom. Our teacher asks us to create the space and this is what we came up with. And we’re the ones responsible for it too! Just looking around, I like spending my days here! Wouldn’t you? “We have our 7 Habits posted over there. We created the posters the first week of school as a reminder of how we want to grow as leaders. We see them, we speak and hear them, and we use them every day. “This is our class mission state“And lastly, on the wall here, is our leadership-roles display. Everyone in our class has a leadership role all the time, so this is where we check in on who is responsible for what and also get a sense of what we might want to try next month. We also help out the next person who takes over our role by teaching them what we learned in the role.” “Some things that we do that aren’t posted on a wall but that we do as leaders are class meetings, morning greeting, and class celebrations. And that is the key to, actually, everything we do in our class— it’s that we do it and we own it.” Engaged students are more likely to feel ownership, take risks in their learning, develop strong relationships, and build up their leadership skills. I can’t think of a better way to develop global citizens. (Information included in this article came from the Leader In Me Weekly)
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