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Student Leadership model |
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The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others (M.K. Gandhi) Your article on the Hutchins’ School student leadership re-modelling (Autumn 2008) has caused me to reflect on our own changing structures here in India at 110 year old Hebron School. Indian society is very hierarchical and the expectations on me, as the Principal of an independent ‘British’ style international boarding school, are intense. Visitors always expect to meet the Principal, even if they are ‘merely’ selling a new photocopying machine, and my hand grows stiff from the cheques, certificates, testimonials and security passes that I alone am expected to sign. (Having just signed 370 Clubs’ certificates recently, the staff organiser slipped in a special certificate in my name headed ‘The Signing Club’. He wondered if I’d notice. I did!). With such expectations, we might be forgiven for continuing with a very status-driven and position-oriented student leadership model. Change, however, is in the air. Hebron has around eighty students in its final two years (standards 12 & 13) of whom 18 are school Prefects. Six years ago, when I moved from ‘Vice’ to Principal, I can remember skulking around in the dark at an outdoors, evening, student concert trying to find the 18 young men and women on whom the privileges and positions of Prefectship were to be bestowed from the five-person Senior Management and myself. My role at this point was to whisper the invitations in their ears and hope that in the dark I didn’t slip up on false identity and find a tall but juvenile tenth grader thrust into unexpected limelight! Since that day we have worked to improve on our leadership modeling. In the penultimate, standard 12, year the whole peer group attend a residential course on leadership run by our own staff. Later each student is interviewed personally by myself to ascertain what areas of service they feel called to for the final year in school (Std. 13). The outgoing Prefects each submits their ‘votes’, as do those staff most closely involved in teaching and dorm parenting the A level classes (Stds. 12 / 13). There’s then a staff meeting to discuss possibilities before the Senior Management Team makes the final decisions and letters of invitation are written. Our system is still evolving and continues to lead to some heartache amongst those not chosen as Prefects. However, in the past three years we have sought to ensure that every Std. 13 student has their own area of special responsibility such as a prep mentor, a library helper, a sports’ captain or in-class support for our junior school. House Captains (primarily for sport) and the pupil-elected Student Council (which organises a canteen, a lounge, special events and charitable enterprises) all help to ‘spread the load’. Much, of course, depends on the students taking up the challenge to ‘serve and not to be served’ but we are endeavouring to inculcate a more inclusive spirit of community service. I’m now waiting for a bright idea on how to share out my signing responsibilities! (Alastair Reid, from Scotland, has been Principal of Hebron School in south India since 2002. Hebron has 370 students from aged 5 to 19 years, most of them boarders, and it serves primarily the Christian Worker community of Asia and Africa. It offers the English National Curriculum leading to IGCSE and A level. Website: www.hebronooty.org Principal’s email: principal@hebronooty.org )
Article submitted for publication to ‘Principal Matters’ – the journal for Secondary School leaders in Australia.
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