Leaders of the Class: Ensuring All Learners in Your Secondary Classroom Identity as a Leader
Format
Individual Presentation
Format
Workshop
First Presenter's Institution
Cor Creative Partners LLC
First Presenter’s Email Address
maureen@corcreativepartners.com
First Presenter's Brief Biography
Maureen Chapman loves school. Maureen is a lifelong educator who taught for 15 years in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms and spent eight years in school leadership. As a Curriculum Director and the head of an Instructional Leadership team, Maureen oversaw curriculum, resources, student data, instructional coaching, professional development, new teacher induction, and career education. Since co-founding cor creative partners, Maureen has leveraged her experience, expertise, and love of education to her work coaching, consulting, and facilitating professional development programs. Maureen speaks publicly across the country, and she is currently collaborating with James on a book for Solution Tree that provides a practical roadmap for integrating leadership into the secondary classroom.
Second Presenter's Institution
Cor Creative Partners LLC
Second Presenter’s Email Address
james@corcreativepartners.com
Second Presenter's Brief Biography
James Simons loves school. Prior to co-founding cor creative partners, James Simons served as a high school principal and dean of students, an instructional coach, a middle and high school English teacher, a visual storyteller, and a writer. In his current role, James coaches school leaders and classroom teachers, facilitates team- and school-level professional development, offers consulting services, and contributes to a community of thought leaders by speaking, producing videos, and writing. James has presented at local and national conferences, and along with Maureen, he is writing a book for Solution Tree about sequentially building leadership skills in the classroom throughout the school year.
Submitter
I am submitting this proposal as one of the presenter(s)
Location
Scarbrough 1
Strand #1
Head: Academic Achievement & Leadership
Strand #2
Heart: Social & Emotional Skills
Relevance
This session connects to the Head strand because the session allows educators to make plans to build leadership skills in the academic context, through academic work. We are both experienced classroom teachers and instructional leaders, and we work within the academic context across many schools types and settings.
This session connects to the Heart strand because the skills and habits and competencies of leaders are social and emotional skills. Leaders must be self-aware and socially aware as they engage in self-management and build relationships and make healthy decisions.
Brief Program Description
What would it take for all students to hold an identity as a leader in the classroom? In this workshop, we unpack the definition of leadership, examine interactive pedagogy structures that allow all students to take on leadership roles, and explore self-reflection and self-assessment tools that allow students to set and see progress on concrete leadership goals.
Summary
This session utilizes the CASEL 3 Signature Practices in its design and mirrors the design of a classroom lesson that activates leadership.
Music plays as participants enter the room. Tables are already prepared for interaction.
The session opens with a brief introduction, rationale, and emotional awareness exercise using a tool adapted from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence Mood Meter.
Participants then pair individual goals with our session goals before co-constructing the leadership skills they hope to see in their students on chart paper, using "I can" statements.
Individually, participants identify three skills they would like to priortize on an index card before collectively identifying one to discuss further.
Participants then engage in a structured, goal-driven, balanced spiderweb discussion about strategies they could use to teach the chosen skill.
After the discussion, table groups reflect individually and reflectively on the experience, and individually commit to trying a strategy from those discussed and modeled in the session.
We then highlight the importance of our own language to students, using examples of student responses from our work interviewing students. Participants then offer an affirmation to another participant using the sentence stem, "You were a leader, because..."
Evidence
https://schoolguide.casel.org/focus-area-3/classroom/integration-of-sel-and-instruction/
https://casel.org/fundamentals-of-sel/what-is-the-casel-framework/
https://restart-reinvent.learningpolicyinstitute.org/ensure-supports-social-and-emotional-learning
https://hbr.org/2023/02/what-makes-leadership-development-programs-succeed
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0742051X21002018?via%3Dihub
https://ascd.org/el/articles/6-strategies-to-bolster-student-led-discussions
Learning Objective 1
Participants will be able to collaboratively determine the discrete skills of leadership.
Learning Objective 2
Participants will be able to co-construct strategies for teaching leadership skills in their classrooms.
Learning Objective 3
Participants will be able to practice strategies for activating leadership skills in their classrooms.
Keyword Descriptors
Leadership, Reflection, Goal Setting, Academics, Classroom, Secondary, Routines, Education
Presentation Year
2025
Start Date
3-5-2025 9:45 AM
Recommended Citation
Chapman, Maureen and Simons, James, "Leaders of the Class: Ensuring All Learners in Your Secondary Classroom Identity as a Leader" (2025). National Youth Advocacy and Resilience Conference. 76.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/nyar_savannah/2025/2025/76
Leaders of the Class: Ensuring All Learners in Your Secondary Classroom Identity as a Leader
Scarbrough 1
What would it take for all students to hold an identity as a leader in the classroom? In this workshop, we unpack the definition of leadership, examine interactive pedagogy structures that allow all students to take on leadership roles, and explore self-reflection and self-assessment tools that allow students to set and see progress on concrete leadership goals.