Next Leadership Exchange

We have another Leadership Exchange coming up in a week: Powerful!
Jostens Renaissance Leadership Exchange
Belhaven Middle School
Linwood, NJ 08221
Frank Rudnesky FrankRudnesky@linwoodschools.org

This idea is too powerful not to spread around. One of our goals in creating a leadership school was to have our students become leadership facilitators for other schools and students. After completing several exchanges with other schools, we have seen the positive affects on their entire school culture, and this allows us to continually fine-tune the leadership component of our Renaissance process along with our goals and objectives. We have gone "full circle" again this year by allowing our students the opportunity to network and facilitate leadership training with other schools located across our county.

Our exchange started last summer, when we worked on developing a relationship with a new Renaissance school. We took a group of our students and teachers to another school for the entire day to facilitate Renaissance leadership training, swap ideas, develop new relationships, and start a joint service-learning project.

The day started with music and introductions of staffulty and students: Each participant wore a name tag and quickly stood up to introduce themselves. Prior to the training, we obtained pictures from both schools and put together a photo-story with music to get the kids jump started. After that, we made a presentation of the Jostens Renaissance process at Belhaven Middle School, and we introduced some of our leadership traits with “What is Renaissance?”

Then we embarked on a variety of team-building activities that included:
5 Great Things About Your School: We broke into small groups within our schools and had the students write great things on giant sheets of paper

Footprints: Students teamed with a partner from the other school. They traced each other’s feet, cut them out, and wrote leadership traits and principles. They stuck them on the wall in the hall for everyone to see.

We showed the Starfish Video and gave each student and teacher bookmark/pins. We discussed the importance of positive role models.

Video Character Commercials: Groups of students from each school developed, edited, and completed video commercials with various character traits to post to their websites and show their respective schools.

3 Great Things You Want Your School To Do: After listening to students describe the great things happening at their schools, we wanted the students to develop some new ideas at each school. Again, we had the students break into small teams and write their ideas on giant paper to take to their schools. Each team presented their ideas in front of everyone.

The students from the two schools were mixed up in some of the team building activities. There were ten groups of five for most and teams of two for another activity to give the students multiple practice opportunities As the day progressed, you could see the comfort level increase in a positive way.

The students ate lunch together to further bond the two schools. At the end of the day, we showed our Renaissance theme videos from previous years along with the beginning of this year’s video. We had our students talk about the importance of creating a Visible, Tangible, Walkaroundable (V,T,W) Renaissance environment. Before we left, we had an awards ceremony that included all of the students.

Our second day together happened several months later. This time, the other students visited our school. Our students lined up to greet the other school’s students and staffulty as they came off the bus. The visiting students were amazed.

We started with reintroductions. Then we went around the room for everyone to tell who they gave a Starfish pin to and why. The day only got better as we continued our leadership training with teacher and student facilitators. We continued to mix the schools up in teams with team building, and service learning.

I like everybody who…: We mixed the teams with both schools. We had four circles with chair for everyone except on student. The student without a chair stood in the middle and announced: I like everybody who likes ice cream. Everyone that like ice cream gets up and has to move to a different chair. There is always an extra student. Then that student says, “I like everybody who….” Students are debriefed by staffulty facilitators. We try to relay the message that although we are from different schools, we have a lot in common. This theme carries to the next part of our Renaissance presentation.

Fish Bowl: Again, students formed four circles mixing up the different schools. Index cards with various questions are placed in the middle. One is selected and the students go around the circle with everyone answering the same question. This is repeated as many times as desired. Question like: If you had a superpower, what would it be? Or What is a problem facing the world?

Leadership Sticks: Students and teachers are given a small stick that they write on all day. As the day progresses, they write words connected with Jostens Renaissance, leadership, and character. At the end of the day, they have a keepsake and a reminder of the values they learned and connected.

In between presentations, we took all the students to the gym for several rounds of “Mission Impossible”. The students are put on teams mixing up the two schools on the teams. Teams compete against one another by trying to get all members from one end of the gym to the other side. Students use mats, hoops, scooters, boards, and other objects to prevent them from hitting the floor. If a member touches, then that member must start over. This game is a great activity for confidence and teamwork.

In the spirit of the "abundance mentality" , we feel that the more Renaissance schools in our geographic area, the better our school Jostens Renaissance process will become through collaboration and sharing. This creates more ideas and generates more leadership opportunities for students and staffulty.

As we go out into our extended community, more adults and more students are speaking the same language. Rarely, do our students or teachers go to an event without running into a new found Renaissance friend!