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How Will You Enhance Student Leadership in Your Classroom?

How Will You Enhance Student Leadership in Your Classroom?

How would you answer this teacher interview question? Explain what you would do to enhance student leadership in your classroom.

It’s vital the response you give to the job interview question is truthful, relevant to the position, and shows your value to the school district.

The following could be a possible answer, or it may provide ideas for you to tailor your response.

Many high school classroom activities can enhance leadership skills. An effective leader should make responsible decisions, think critically, and act as a positive role model. Teachers can aid in harnessing these skills by implementing different games and activities within a high school. Fostering students’ leadership skills can help to prepare students for future challenges. Teachers can give each of their students a leadership role in the classroom. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 or 30 students. What matters is their mental age, meaning ‘maturity.’

In my classroom, I enhance student leadership skills by providing leadership opportunities within my classroom in the form of peer teaching, ‘teacher for a day’ activities, and providing students with responsibilities. Students need to be allowed to use the information and material they are learning in the classroom and/or assist in the recreation of the learning concepts. This can include breaking students up into small groups or working one-on-one with their peers.  These activities allow students to reteach the material to their peers by utilizing different learning modalities. This helps build their social skills, reinforce their own understanding of the material, and build their self-confidence. For instance, I implement clearly defined peer learning lessons where my class is divided into small groups, with each group led by a student leader.

I will enhance student leadership skills more formally by introducing activities that foster leadership skills development and social and problem-solving skills.

For instance, I utilize debates, group discussions, and group projects that allow students to work collaboratively to solve a problem. Brainstorming activities are highly effective, and I put students into small groups tasking them with finding solutions to political, economic, or social problems. This allows students to work together and brainstorm large and small-scale solutions to the given problem. After each group has reached their answers, it turns into a class-wide discussion to debate the most plausible solutions.

Do you need help preparing for your next teacher interview?