Nurturing Future Leadership Skills in Five to Eight Year-Old Children through Self-Awareness Activities

Executive Summary There is an increasing emphasis in formal and community-based education on youth leadership through self-awareness development via community service: Community service programs often focus upon a "remedial" context, attempting to encourage community leadership among high school students who are about to assume adult roles and responsibilities. This paper introduces a new approach to community service using a proven developmentally age-appropriate curriculum that nurtures self-awareness, the building block for leadership skills, in five to eight year--old children. This experiential-based, discovery-learning curriculum is easily utilized in the community, school, and or collaborative leadership programs, especially those focused upon education, public safety, or the environment. ********** Leadership skills are essential for young people to feel satisfaction and contribute to society. By youth helping themselves and others to realize and achieve their goals they are able to meet the demands of life in adulthood. Numerous authors have commented on the critical role of experiential education, both formal and non-formal, in helping young people develop fundamental aspects of leadership as a foundation for their future civic responsibilities as adult citizens (Battistoni, 1997; Burstyn, 1996; Mendel-Reyes, 1998; Miller, 1997). For young people to gain leadership skills they first must get to know themselves and others, that is, develop a sense of self or self-awareness. The purpose of this paper is to examine how a program for 5 to 8 year-old children enhances leadership skills by helping them to better understand their inner selves. Understanding Leadership By understanding the various components of leadership, a process for nurturing effective leadership skills in our youth can be developed. Five essentials for fostering effective leadership have been identified by Woyach (1993). They are: 1) help youth learn specific knowledge and skills related to leadership 2) emphasize experiential learning and provide opportunities 3) involve collaborative experiences, teamwork, and networking 4) involve significant relationships with mentors, positive role models, or other nurturing adults 5) promote awareness, understanding, and tolerance of others. According to Gatchell and his associates at the University of Georgia (1989), leadership skills are the abilities needed to take responsibility for oneself(actions, etc.) and to work with others in achieving goals. They further explain that youth leadership can be learned by practice and real life experiences; that leadership is a relationship between people by the way we interact with others and our sensitivity to what others need; that leadership is determined by the situation with different people leading at different times depending on the context of the situation; and that leadership skills are essential for everyone whether to lead ourselves and others, both as members and leaders of groups. Bennis and Nanus (1985) concluded that while all people have the potential to be leaders, an individual's awareness of leadership within specific situational contexts is critical to developing this potential. Halloran and Benton (1987) defined leadership simply as the ability to influence the actions of others, in either formal or informal settings. Gardner (1987) identified the capacity to understand and interact with others as a critical leadership skill that, although developed more thoroughly during adolescence, begins to form before five years of age. van Linden and Fertman (1998) identified three stages of leadership development among adolescents: awareness, interaction, and mastery. According to Shoemaker "Children, even at young ages, are involved in all steps of service-learning ... Learning becomes more meaningful as children learn through real-life, hands-on experiences" (1999, p. …