What is done in your area / school or what services have you discovered to develop gifted leaders. Which ones have you found to be excellent? Just getting the topic rolling here, I really liked the description below......
Old Dad, our kids schools define leadership in much the same way as the article and our older kids' school (7th and 5th grade currently) purposely works to nurturing and developing these skills - it's as much a part of the school mission as advanced academics. Specific things the school does are team activities (in project work at school, in PE), working across grade level so that older children have opportunities to act as mentors to the younger children, taking part in class and whole-school volunteer projects that benefit others in our city, and taking part in opportunities to do projects that link students in other parts of the world together. All students are also expected to participate in all the "all-school activities" in some way - so this stretches kids who aren't by nature singers or theater-nuts or whatever to find a way to fit in and be a helping part of each important event at the school. The thing that I see having the most impact is that advisors and teachers taking a personal interest in each student from the perspective of their "whole", not just their academic grades. When we have student conferences much of the talk focuses on the teachers talking about ways that our kids have "stepped up" to help in some way, how they interact with their peers, how they are viewed by classmates and peers, and how they have impacted others by being a role model. There was also discussion of personal responsibilities - not just the responsibility to do your homework and do it well, but to treat classmates kindly, to participate, to act as a leader. Just having another adult outside parental units look for those qualities in my ds and then reinforce that they are important and well-received helped my ds build self-esteem and motivation to *be* a good citizen/role model etc.
Although my kids are in private school now, their previous public school had a similar mission and did much of the same approach, but fell down (in a big way) on the mentoring and personal investment in developing individual students by the teachers. I don't fault the teachers for that - I think it was due primarily to the school's administration.
