Decades ago, in 1981, I led a retreat for 30 high school students from Los Angeles and Orange County. We stayed in a wooded retreat center for three days to launch a year-long program of students engaged as school service leaders.
Seeking a higher level of engagement in uncovering what it means to be a leader, my colleague Megan Swezey Fogarty and I asked students to “build-a-leader” with long sheets of paper and markers. This initial experience has continued in a myriad of forms ever since, always generating insight and in-depth conversations. The biggest plus is seeing 100% of the youth engaged as they collaborate simultaneously to add and connect ideas, inevitably laughing along the way. During this first experience, students added knees for “flexibility,” a bald spot for “open-mindedness,” and one group turned their paper over and added a buttocks as something “to fall back on.”
When led with adults in workshops around the world, whatever the focus, the results are the same: same laughter, same ping-pong of ideas, same collaboration with 100% engagement, same meaningful conversations and range of insights.
In the years of this “build-a-___,” participants (grade 3 and up) have built leaders and learners. They have built advisors and advisees. They have built friends, teachers, and graduates. At a Back-To-School Night, in one room parents built “teens” while their offspring built “parents” in another room with a dynamic a conversation to follow. As the CBK Associates team leads professional development for the NYC Youth Leadership Councils program, we guide police officers in building “facilitators” before leading this same experience with their youth council members. This is a process for everyone.
In 2019, at the Nagoya (Japan) Service Learning and Advisory two-day workshops, a few adult groups used animals as their form, for example, one group “built-an-administrator” in the form of a dolphin, and another an octopus. One group went full abstract and built a service learning brain! An entire new world of possibilities!
After a visit to Chadwick International School in Incheon, South Korea, I received a visual from educators Emily Nunn and Jessica Sonneveld with this note: “Emily and I have been reading ‘The Power of Inquiry’. Instead of writing out what an inquiry teacher looks like, we decided to use the tool we learnt during your workshop and made our learning visible by drawing what we think an inquiry teacher looks like. Although she doesn’t look like the average human, it truly shows how incredible teachers with an inquiry mindset are! I have attached a photo for your viewing pleasure.”
Send comments, questions, or to receive a description of how to “Build-a __” with your students or group, email cathy[at]cbk.associates.
Cathy
Cathryn Berger Kaye, M.A.