Leadership Skills: Middle School Manual

Leadership Program

Description

Today’s educators face a critical challenge that goes beyond the curriculum: they must nurture appropriate social and emotional behaviors by providing youth with the conflict-resolution and leadership skills necessary for modern life. The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project delivers on that need with an approach that engages, informs, and empowers its early adolescent audience. 

The Violence Prevention Project Leadership Skills curriculum has been implemented in over 5,000 classrooms for over 150,000 Title 1 students—and has earned distinction from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as the country’s top program of its kind. This guidebook includes thirty-seven lessons complete with step by-step instructions that make facilitation easy and accessible. Help your students get to the core of conflict and transform into leaders in your classroom and community.

Sujets

• Children's
• Youth leadership
• School violence
• Experiential learning
• Leadership development
• Nonviolence
• Bullying

Informations

• Publié par: Girl Friday Books
• Date de parution: 02 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 16
• EAN13: 9781736357972
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Copyright © 2022 The Leadership Program
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Created by The Leadership Program, New York www.theleadershipprogram.com
The Leadership Program 535 8th Avenue, Floor 16 New York, NY 10018

Published by Girl Friday Books ™ , Seattle www.girlfridaybooks.com
Produced by Girl Friday Productions
ISBN (paperback): 978-1-941916-18-6 ISBN (ebook): 978-1-736357-97-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022941883

Table of Contents
Overview and Facilitator Guide
Part One: Introduction to Leadership
Objective: Students will identify leaders and qualities of leaders.
1. How Am I a Leader?
2. Leadership Password
3. Real Kids Rap on Respect
Part Two: Self-Affirmation
Objective: Students will identify positive attributes about themselves and their classmates.
1. Guess Who I Am
2. Shields
3. Guess Who Said It
4. Great Plates
5. Accomplishment Ribbons
6. Your Many Roles
7. My Interests
8. I Am a Gift
Part Three: Cooperation
Objective: Students will work effectively with others.
1. Detective Leader
2. Machines
3. Cooperation Squares
4. Diversity Pursuit
5. Cooperation Faces
6. Emotion Ocean
7. Feeling Faces
8. A Giving Tree
Part Four: Vision and Imagination
Objective: Students will use their imaginations to understand different perspectives.
1. Future Day Journal
2. Four Squares
3. Steppin’ Up!
4. Biography of a Stranger
5. Goals, Plan, Action!
Part Five: Conflict Management
Objective: Students will define conflict and demonstrate effective conflict-management skills.
1. Spectrogram
2. Conflict and Me
3. Labels
4. Active Listening: Introduction
5. Active Listening: Practice
6. ABCs of Anger
7. “I” Messages
8. Givin’ It
9. Takin’ It
10. Sweet Talk
11. Choices, Decisions, Consequences: Part 1
12. Choices, Decisions, Consequences: Part 2
13. Conflict Scramble
14. Stop, Think, Blue
15. Dramas and Dilemmas
Part Six: Project Work (optional for expanded residencies)
Objective: Students will create projects that reflect on their experience during the program and demonstrate an understanding of their responsibility as members of a community.
1. Final Demonstration Work Day
2. Celebrating Leaders!
Part Seven: Reference
1. Quick Fixes and Fun Fillers
2. Classroom Management Techniques
3. The Experiential Learning Cycle
4. Theoretical Rationale

Leadership Skills Manual Overview and Facilitator Guide
Overview
Welcome to The Leadership Program’s Violence Prevention Project (VPP) Leadership Skills manual. VPP is a school-based preventive intervention program targeted to young adolescents and teens. This comprehensive curriculum is structured to support both experienced and beginning facilitators in implementing VPP Leadership Skills lessons. Using this guide will help you effectively facilitate the curriculum, ensuring the best possible experience for student participants.
The manual contains forty-one lessons, designed by The Leadership Program, field tested through implementation to thousands of students since 1998 in urban public schools, and refined for optimum effectiveness and student engagement. The lessons are organized into six components that engage students in a variety of activities and are scaffolded to develop their awareness and trust, prepare them to acquire core conflict management skills, and reflect on what they have learned. The components are: Introduction to Leadership Self-Affirmation Cooperation Vision and Imagination Conflict Management Project Work
All lessons follow the same structure to provide a consistent framework for every session. The lessons open with information and tools to help in your facilitation and continue with step-by-step instructions for each activity.
Each lesson begins with the following information: Lesson objective: what students will achieve through the lesson Summary: a brief description of the activities during the lesson Aim: the question to be answered through lesson activities and processing Standards: the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) standards (based on New York State SEL guidelines) that are met when the lesson is facilitated according to instructions Materials: a specific list of the materials to prepare in order to facilitate each particular lesson, including masters of handouts and worksheets, where applicable Handouts: information and reference pages, to be distributed to students Worksheets: activity pages to be filled in by students during lessons Vocabulary: significant words used in each lesson, to be incorporated throughout the activities Facilitator note: an alert when the lesson requires attention to specific details in preparation for or during the session
The step-by-step instructions are divided into sections within each lesson: Warm-Up: this is a short activity that focuses the group on the session topic and serves as an icebreaker Main Activity: this may be divided into two or three parts and includes the activities that go to the heart of the lesson topic Closing: a simple format for inviting each student to reflect on how they can use what they have learned during the lesson in their lives Extension Activities: additional ideas for optional worksheets that students can complete or activities they can do on their own related to the topic
Our facilitation process is built on the experiential learning cycle (ELC), a structured learning sequence that guides multiple styles of learners through experience-based activities (Pfeiffer & Jones, 1975, 1983). Creating continuous threads from one experience to the next, the ELC lets learners process an activity through five stages of comprehension culminating with concept and skill application. Building on student input and curiosity, facilitators interject well-placed processing questions that allow students to discover each lesson’s learning points in a manner that feels organic and seamless. The process has proven successful in all of The Leadership Program’s urban school programs and is critical to the effective implementation of VPP.
Sprinkled throughout each lesson, therefore, you will find: Processing Questions: suggested ELC processing questions that apply to the students’ experience during the specific lesson Discussion Questions: suggested questions to guide the students in reflecting on other aspects of their experience and the topic of the lesson
The suggested questions and prompts are provided to guide students in processing their experience and what they have learned. An effective facilitator will listen attentively to students’ comments and responses, and both use these contributions to formulate questions that move the discussion toward answering the Aim or the Closing question and help students apply what they have learned to their lives. You may choose to use the suggested processing and discussion questions that are included, or you may prefer to come up with your own questions based on the group’s experience during the session, or you may want to use a combination of the two options. Whichever approach you choose, processing the experience that the students have during the lesson is essential to the success of the VPP Leadership Skills curriculum.
Leadership Skills Student Workbook
Designed for participating students as a companion to the curriculum, the workbook provides each student with all the handouts and worksheets they will need for each lesson. The relevant workbook page numbers are listed in the Materials section at the beginning of each lesson in the teacher manual.
For some lessons, student workbooks also contain additional Questions to delve further into the classroom experience and Dig Ins to allow students to take their individual reflections to the next level. These are excellent options for Extension Activities .
Preparation Essentials
Space Setup:
Some of our activities include games or physical activities, so it is ideal to create an open space in the room.
You may want to have students form a circle to start each lesson. A circle builds community and allows students to easily see and interact with each other.
Remember: Read your lesson ahead of time to decide which arrangement of the furniture will work best for each session. For group interactions, chairs set up in a horseshoe or circle are good. If you will be doing a lot of small group work, set up chairs in small circular clusters. Make sure everyone can see you and any visual aids you may display.
Materials:
Always read through the list of materials you will need to facilitate the lesson and prepare your materials in advance to ensure good use of time and smooth running during the session.
If materials include worksheets and/or handouts, you will find one of each at the end of the lesson from which to make copies.
Suggestion: Complete a sample of each worksheet for yourself before the lesson; you will be able to anticipate any questions that students may have and make your group feel more comfortable if you provide your worksheet as a sample.
Time Management:
These lessons have been created for a forty-five-minute class period time frame. In instances when you have less than forty-five minutes, we recommend that you shorten the lesson either by eliminating a