Leadership Lab Kicks Off School Year

While the theme of the leadership activities changes a bit each year, the core of the program remains constant. The lab, which is structured around workshops the faculty have designed, culminates with a Leadership Festival of workshops that the eighth graders develop for the younger students that encourage them to not only understand Rivers’ definition of leadership, but to live it every single day.

 

“There are an infinite number of topics you can cover under the umbrella of our definition of leadership, especially when you combine it with the school’s core values of ‘integrity’ and ‘perseverance,’” said Middle School Dean of Students Sam Poland. “It’s about setting up the eighth graders to understand that they have a real responsibility to introduce these concepts to the sixth and seventh graders, to introduce them – or reintroduce them – to the type of community we want to have.”

 

The preparations for this integral first-week-of-school program begins in the spring when the Leadership Team, comprised of Mr. Poland and several other Middle School faculty members, meets to establish the week’s framework and organize workshops to carry out the overarching theme. Then, the week prior to the beginning of school, the eighth graders convene at Camp Nonesuch for their orientation and to begin developing their own workshops.

 

The beginning of the day at Nonesuch focuses on bringing the students back together as a class and getting all of the excitement of being back with their friends out of their systems before the sixth and seventh graders arrive at Rivers the following week. The rest of the orientation program prepares them for the various leadership roles they are about to take on.

 

One such role is as the eldest member of a “family group” with younger students. For the sixth graders and new seventh graders, these family groups are their introduction to Rivers, and have a huge impact on how they feel going into their first days of school.

 

“We talk to the eighth graders about how to small talk and how to get to know someone through conversation with an activity at Nonesuch called ‘Big Small Talk,’ where they talk to a faculty member and then introduce that faculty member to the group,” Mr. Poland said. “Then during Leadership Lab's family time, the eighth graders role is to not only get to know the other members of their group, but also to make those sixth and seventh graders feel comfortable here at Rivers. They revisit these family groups several times throughout the year, so establishing that relationship early is important.”

 

On the final day of the Leadership Lab, while the sixth and seventh graders spend some time together in activities as individual classes, the eighth graders begin setting up and refining their workshops. The younger students then rotate through the various workshops, which vary from role-playing situations to skits with scripts that the participating students rewrite in order to demonstrate choices and actions that would better serve the community. Planning and running these workshops is important for the eighth graders to both teach and model Rivers’ definition of leadership.

 

“This opportunity empowers the eighth graders to embrace their role as leaders in the Middle School and to show the sixth and seventh graders that leadership and community isn’t some kind of top-down mandate – it’s something that the people within the community - their peers - really value,” Poland said. “It is a pretty powerful message to take time for Leadership Lab and not start classes right away, because I believe what we lose in class time we get back throughout the year."