Leaders are not born. They are made. Bring this student leadership program to your primary or high school and you will create a community of empowered, inspired student leaders, parents and teachers.
After this transformation, the sky is the limit.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has
Margaret Mead
Emotional Intelligence for Student Leaders
Some people think leadership is a skill you are born with and that leaders have a natural ability to make others follow them. Some call it charisma. Others call it power or superior social skills. When they talk, others listen and do.
At Be Happy in Life, we know how to turn kids into leaders. It is true that some children have more skills naturally, but every child, with the right guidance, mindset, tools and knowledge can step up and be a leader.
Background
In the past 38 years, working with primary and high schools in Australia and across the world, we discovered that many people who think that leadership is a born ability also think it takes a long time to raise leaders. We think leadership is a mindset that can be shifted in a very short time and with that shift, a new leader is born.
We already have thousands of testimonials of dramatic change happening in a 2-day student leadership camp, a 1-day student leadership training, a half-day leadership program for students and even in a single 1.5-hour session. Once the seed is planted, once the shift happens, the process starts and the student is ready to take the journey towards leadership.
Time and time again, principals, teachers and parents tell us they saw a significant shift in the students’ attitude towards self and others as soon as they came out of the workshop or camp. For this, we are very proud.
The most wonderful part of this shift is the fact that it becomes irreversible. Once the mind is shifted towards personal power, confidence and clarity, it never changes back. A child who feels the power coming from a position of confidence, no longer abuses his or her power and therefore becomes a (better) leader.
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Working with so many students for over 38 years, we have the confidence, the knowledge, the resources, the tools and the ability to raise students leaders and help them rise up to the challenge of making a difference in the world around them by leading others.
The “Kids Today, Leaders Tomorrow” student leadership program was developed by Ronit Baras, an educator and life coach, specialising in Emotional intelligence. The main focus of the program is developing the emotional intelligence and leadership skills, required by student leaders to lead others and contribute to community building.
It also inspires and empowers student leaders to participate in community service projects and make a difference in the world around them.
This program has been very successful and had an enormous positive impact on the student leaders and their entire school community. In the last 38 years, this student leadership program has been running around the world in different formats and has been successfully adopted by primary and high schools, as well as youth organisations in Australia.
The “Kids Today, Leaders Tomorrow” program covers key areas required for students to identify and strengthen their leadership skills. Run in a group environment, the activities are challenging, interactive and fun, directing the students towards awareness, confidence and strong social skills required for their student leadership roles.
25 Attitudes & 55 Competencies
In the program, we covers 25 Attitudes of Success which are the most important leadership competencies out of 55 competencies of the student leaders.
- IQ vs. EQ – attitude vs. Knowledge
- Motivation – internal vs. external and positive vs. negative motivation
- Cows and Rhinos – what kind of person am I?
- What’s in it for me? – source of motivations
- Learning from failure – stumbling blocks or stepping stones
- Moving forward – losing past attachments and looking towards the future
- Increasing self worth – how to think highly of myself
- Time management – effectiveness and organisation skills
- Responsibility – the two swords of power
- Gratitude – developing appreciation and positive focus
- Team work – the power of people and how to leverage others’ help
- Zig and Zag – uniqueness, originality and diversity
- Focusing on personal growth – investing in myself as a human being for maximum returns and redefining success
Student Leadership Program benefits
Our student leadership development program is designed for primary and high school students from Year 4 to Year 12. It has been proven to benefit students, their teachers, their families and their communities.
Through this program, student leaders
- Become aware of their role and understand the importance of developing character traits for better leadership
- Develop resilience and empowering attitude towards failure
- Feel powerful, creative, unique and eager to take on tasks they previously perceived as difficult or even impossible
- Develop time management skills and function better under time pressure
- Become self-motivated and positive, measuring themselves by progress and improvement even in the absence of immediate results
- Shift from dependency to empowerment and initiative
- Increase self worth and are tuned to their own belief system and values
Understand the two sides of power and learn to take responsibility over their own thoughts, beliefs and actions- Improve their public speaking skills and feel more confident speaking in front of large audience
- Learn to work in a team and lead a team
- Adopt a positive outlook on life and empower others around them to make a positive difference in the world around them
- Begin to affect their friends, classmates, school community and social circles positively with their developed social skills
- Build stronger relationship with their families and are able to recognise the importance of investing in their support structure
Understand the two sides of power and learn to take responsibility over their own thoughts, beliefs and actionsTeachers attending the leadership program receive a professional development certificate with credit for all the time they spent at the camp.
Parents of participating students share an emotional bonding event with their kids that will stay with them for life.
Your options
Your school can experience the Kids Today, Leaders Tomorrow student leadership program in three formats:
- Leadership Skills Training Day – One full training day
- Kids Leading Social Change – Two-day student leadership Camp
- Combination Program – Leadership Skills day followed by a Leadership Camp
- Online Leadership Program – 5 sessions with the students + 1 session with their parents. This program suits small groups of private clients, but can also be used for a small remote school. Participating teachers attend all the sessions.
The training day and the camp are complimentary programs. While the leadership skills training day gives the student leaders the basics of leadership, the camp gives them greater opportunities to experience and practice the learned skills and abilities.
We have schools running the training days only. We have schools running camps only. And devoted schools prefer the combination program of both training day followed by a camp and run them every year to all their leadership team for over six years.
Although it is not compulsory to do the leadership training before the leadership camp, our records show that students attending the leadership camp after attending the leadership training had an advantage over their peers attending the camp only and assumed more responsible positions during camp.
Who should attend?
Both of our student leadership development programs run during school term on school premises. Schools can benefit from running them for any of the following groups of students:
- Student leadership team
- Entire class or selected students from a grade level, e.g. all the girls in Year 6
- Selected students who need to develop leadership abilities, e.g. sports captains
- Representatives from several schools in a “sister-school” project
Ronit Baras – Your Leadership Coach
Ronit Baras is an educator, life coach, author, journalist and justice of peace. She has been using Emotional Intelligence techniques for 38 years with children of all ages in several countries (USA, Israel, Thailand, Singapore & Australia). She has developed a number of special programs, which have been hugely successful.
Ronit has taught at the University of Queensland, training for institute of public administrators (IPAA) Queensland. She was the State Director of Together for Humanity Foundation and the school program director of the Global Learning Centre. She has conducted many emotional intelligence programs to enhance successful leadership in Australia and overseas.
Ronit is an experienced and powerful presenter, delivering inspiring messages of love, respect, acceptance and determination to the people who attend her programs.
Ronit has helped thousands of students discover their strength and uniqueness and leverage them to succeed in school and life. She has been teaching, coaching, presenting and writing over 38 years. Her writing has been published in educational magazines around Australia.
Her parenting blog, Family Matters, is a great resource for thousands of parents and teachers with over 1,500 articles on family life, parenting, personal growth and education and attracts 50,000 readers each month.
Research shows that investing in emotional intelligence and equipping student leaders with social and emotional management skills yields the best results. Ronit strongly believes that leadership is not a position but a state of mind that requires self-awareness, confidence, uniqueness, a positive mindset, courage, creativity and good social skills and that leaders are not born but made.
“It is our goal as educators to awaken the passionate leader within”, she says.
More Information
- Leadership Skills Training Day – One full training day
- Kids Leading Social Change – Two-day student leadership Camp
- Student leadership program testimonials
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