St Margaret's College 2017 Autumn Evergreen Magazine Evergreen Autumn 2017 online | Page 23

Junior School
Providing leadership
opportunities for students
Being part of a larger school community has many benefits
for our Junior School. Having older students of SMC
work in partnership with our Junior School students allows
our girls to learn, respect and look up to their 'older sisters'.
It helps give them direction, aspiration and inspiration. Our
senior students at SMC are simply wonderful role models
to our Junior School girls.
Even though our Senior School provides our school with
student leaders, we think that it is important to provide
our Year 5 and 6 students with leadership opportunities.
As such, we call our Year 6 students “Junior Seniors”! The
benefits of developing leadership capabilities at a young age
allows various social, intrapersonal and interpersonal skills,
all of which are becoming more essential to members
of a community.
Benefits include giving students
a voice or a way to learn how to express
ideas or goals in a productive and constructive way; allowing
students to communicate with adults and other peers which
teaches them negotiation, communication and team work;
developing a strong self-identity and confidence; teaching
students how important it is to contribute to a community;
beginning to develop team building skills by setting goals,
planning and delegating tasks.
All these are prevalent in varying degrees when students are
encouraged in any way to be leaders of any age. In the Junior
School it may be through committing to be a librarian, or IT
leader, a lunch time monitor to the Junior Juniors, a sports shed
monitor or part of our Junior School Executive.
Julie Calder – Head of Junior School
“Leadership responsibility, whether it be big or small, all contribute
to the development of teaching our girls to 'Live and Lead'.”
AUTUMN 2017 21.