The Power of Distributed Leadership and Collaboration: Turning Questions and Ideas into Action

So it's been a while since I've added to my blog. Partly because I have been dedicating myself to summer coursework, and partly because I had very little inspiration over the summer with school out. Now, only a few weeks back to work and I once again see inspiration everywhere.

This past week we started house games off with a bang! The excitement came from the house games committee taking a crazy and off-the-cuff idea and turning it into an inspirational event for our students. Bravo!

Here is their story... and the inspirational video, which was the result of their collaboration and leadership.

So, it all started with a simple conversation between myself and the committee. Year after year I like to ask two very basic, but important questions of pretty much everything. Why are we doing this? Why do we it this way? No I don't like to stir the pot, I just think these questions allow us to always act with purpose and meaning, which is important in education, a professional where irrelevant traditions still plague practice. They are questions that allow us to keep the focus on our student's experience and learning.

But back to the celebration at hand, and my conversation with the house games committee. A simple conversation that quickly lead to a realisation about learning community at CIS. We have so much student turnover each year that we shouldn't assume our students understand the purpose of house games, or assume that they will be automatically inspired to participate with heart and soul.

Questions often lead to more questions.

• How could we engage students more in the House Games?

• Could there be more of connection between each of the week of games that maintained student interest and passion?

These are questions that strive for quality, innovation, engagement and meaning. They are questions that spit in the face of mediocrity and tradition. And as often is the case, with student centred questions like these, they lead to some pretty amazing and transformational ideas.

Drum roll please...

As a result of exploring these questions the committee developed an age-appropriate story and a fun animated video to engage students. The story they created ultimately ties the multiple house games events together and motivates students to participate throughout the year.

Now, it's one thing to have an idea, and its another to be able to put that idea into action. This team of six (Deepa, Jane, Deepika, Akshitha, Aakansha and Vishnu) pooled their talents together and pulled this ambitious task off magnificently!

The most rewarding feedback they received was from the students who's excitement carried over for the rest of the week. I could hear students talking excitedly about how they were dragons because they were Draco... lions because they were Leo...etc.

Congratulations team on a job well done this week!

Below is the link to their "legendary" video. Oh, and I forgot to mention they asked me to do the voice over. Of course I pitched in. Now you tell me if I have a future in children's story telling.