Grade School

Student Development

Students find their voice in the classroom and through leadership roles by learning and applying life-ready leadership skills.

Children at Leader in Me Schools thrive in a nurturing environment when they feel safe, confident, and supported by teachers and other staff members. By recognizing each child as a leader with unique gifts and talents to share, all aspects of their education begin to flourish. This social and emotional learning process equips students with essential 21-century skills to build meaningful relationships and take ownership of their education.

Student Leadership Portrait™

Millions of students at Leader in Me Schools are learning to embrace their leadership potential. The Student Leadership Portrait™ outlines the specific skills and competencies student leaders are developing at Leader in Me Schools in order to thrive in the 21st century. The model has four broad categories, with three competencies per category, all of which help students learn to lead themselves and others.

With Leader in Me, schools can help students develop critical skills including:

Leading Self

Depth of Knowledge
Critical Thinking
Creative Thinking

Personal Effectiveness

Self-Discipline
Vision
Initiative

Leading Others

Creating a Shared Purpose
Organizing a Team
Engaging Others’ Talents

Interpersonal Effectiveness

Collaboration
Communication
Relationship Building

7 Habits® Training for Students

7 Habits training for staff is a critical part of implementation. Likewise, Student Leadership Guides teach the 7 Habits to students with equal importance.

This series teaches students the same essential principles teachers learn in 7 Habits training, with content and examples geared specifically toward young teens. Each level addresses key leadership concepts, ensuring a year’s worth of lessons designed to help every student engage and participate in their school’s leadership culture.

The 7 Habits key concepts can be taught directly or integrated into just about any subject or activity—during class lessons, at assemblies, in morning announcements, Family Nights, or at extracurricular events, ensuring a culture of leadership is woven into every aspect of a student’s learning community.

Direct Lessons

Direct lessons help students to not only know the general idea of the 7 Habits®, but to understand and apply the key concepts within them. When students are engaged in their own learning process, they are able to internalize and exercise their leadership potential. This internalization enables them to think critically about their choices and their studies, apply the 7 Habits in day-to-day situations, and move to the application, synthesis, and evaluation levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. Just as core subjects like math and English are often reviewed at the beginning of each new school year, leadership content should also be reviewed with the same frequency to allow for advanced, grade-level understanding and application. When staff and students have common knowledge and a common language, leadership in the classroom and throughout the school starts to grow.

Integrated Approaches

By providing defining, purposeful examples of leadership, students begin to shift from theoretical understanding to real-life application. A conscious, persistent effort to introduce leadership principles in every part of a learning community ensures students are being impacted in a truly transformative way.

Key concepts of the 7 Habits can be integrated into just about any subject or activity l. And this learning can occur anytime, anywhere—during class lessons, at assemblies, in morning announcements, or on Family Nights. When leadership principles are woven into lessons, activities, and day-to-day interactions, leadership becomes a way of living and learning, not just another topic to be taught.

How the Lessons Are Organized

Each level of the series covers 38 key leadership concepts with age-appropriate lesson materials organized into three categories: “Leading Self”, “Leading Others”, and “More Ways to Lead”.

Lessons should be taught over two consecutive grade levels in order to cover all concepts outlined below. Students grow with our unique content in a six-year scaffold plan as leadership principles and application practices build upon each other in subsequent grade levels. The lessons are flexible and teachers can either follow a weekly schedule or create their own based on the present needs of students.

Student Guides are available digitally or on paperback versions.