Journey: First Steps on our Junior School Student Leadership Programme

Across the EiM network of schools, our students are nurtured to become leaders who can inspire, lead, and make a positive difference in the world. The Junior School Student Leadership Journey is one of these programmes. It aims to enable students to connect with one another, to learn from each other and to equip them with relevant leadership skills, techniques and knowledge that they can bring back and implement at their respective schools.

Last month, we held our second online session of the Junior School Student Leadership Journey. Student leaders from chilly Beijing to tropical and Bali and beyond learned how to find information in their own communities and how to craft their own meaningful SMART goals. Participating student leaders from across our Education in Motion (EiM) network of schools – schools in Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Xi'an, Singapore, Seoul, Bali and New Zealand – joined our programme.

The session guided student leaders across EiM to learn what SMART goals are and how to transform unclear goals, such as "I want to make my school even better”, into a goal that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. At DCB, Junior School students recently completed a similar lesson as part of our Portfolio sessions, developing every student's ability to drive their own learning.

Through these sessions, students took away learnings to share and apply with their communities and take action as positive change makers who not only Live Worldwise, but also Lead WorldWise. 

First Steps of Our EiM Student Leadership Journey

Our first-ever Junior School Student Leadership Conference was held online in May 2023 across seven of our EiM schools. Following the success of this conference, we decided to build a comprehensive year-long programme for Junior School students across our family of schools to develop their student leadership capabilities, connect with each other, and develop a student leadership portfolio to demonstrate their growth throughout the year.

Our EiM Junior School Student Leadership Journey programme includes 4 online sessions and 1 in-person conference which will take place in Dehong Xi'an this January. We will also be joined by leaders from Hochalpines Institut Ftan in Switzerland and Dulwich College London.

Our first online session in September was focused on student leaders developing their listening skills to better understand the needs of their community. Our second online session last month explored how student leaders can develop SMART goals to clarify what they want to achieve. Our March session will explore how we can reflect on our progress so far, and our final session in May will give student leaders an opportunity to curate their leadership portfolio and share their progress.

During our Student Leadership Journey Conference in Xi'an this upcoming January, students will have an opportunity to come together, learn leadership skills and begin to work on an action plan for their own school. While students are taking part in these workshops, teachers who accompany their students to our conference will be invited to discuss their own aspirations for the future of our Student Leadership Journey programme. We will listen to their suggestions and use these to outline a plan for the future of Journey. We welcome our community's feedback about this programme to continuously refine our approach and make it as impactful as possible.

Student-driven Leadership Learning at DCB

At DCB, we define Student Agency as students being "able to set their own meaningful goals and develop the skills to achieve them." It is essential for our student leaders to develop their student agency along with their leadership skills so they can maximise their impact as positive change agents working for the good of their community. When students demonstrate leadership capabilities, they also learn how they can lead others and themselves and begin to drive their own learning forward.

Through this journey, we hope to inspire students to want to make a positive impact in their community and beyond. We hope that they can collaborate on projects with other student leaders around the world as part of a youth leadership network, tackling challenges together and learning to view challenges and opportunities through the lens of global citizenship. As students do so, they will learn essential lifelong transformative skills as they progress on their Student Leadership Journey which will enable them to not only Live WorldWise, but also LEAD WorldWise.