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Leadership
Instructor: Marjory Zaik
The Fall 2002 Leadership course aims to engage students as thoughtful
and effective contributors to the Satellite community by building a leadership
core within the larger community while offering a range of classroom experiences
intended to help students grow as learners and leaders. Enrollment is
limited to students who have been at the school for at least one term
and are in good standing. Ideally, every Family Group is represented by
at least two students in the Leadership class. The class meets Monday
through Friday for 55 minutes each day.
This term the Leadership class is offered for English credit because of
its emphasis on verbal communication and thinking and writing skills.
The work of the class falls into the categories of core practices that
build a common culture, recurrent or seasonal activities and projects
that serve the school community and curricular units that develop particular
skills.
Core practices include:
- reflection in the
form of directed journal writing;
- sharing of student writing in class and in small groups;
- reading journalistic efforts of teens published in New Youth Connections
books and periodicals;
- small- and large-group discussion;
- negotiation of curriculum and activities;
- watching films and reading articles together and discussing them, to
build a common culture;
- mindful cultivation of leadership qualities.
Recurrent or seasonal activities and projects include:
- public speaking before Family Group gatherings and in full school community
meetings, and an active role in the planning of those meetings;
- conducting pre-screening visits and informational meetings with prospective
students;
- editorial and feature writing for
a monthly school newspaper (published by the class);
- creative projects involving text and image (thematic bulletin boards
for the school’s hallways and posters promoting school events);
- planning and executing school events such as cultural heritage celebrations,
a Thanksgiving community luncheon, a holiday party and a talent show.
Curricular units include:
- small-group and leadership building: activities related to the viewing
of, discussion of and writing about two feature films: Stand by Me
and The Wizard of Oz.
- readings and activities related to media literacy;
- a six-week unit on video production culminating in the production of
a public service announcement on an aspect of violence in the media and
the linking of student work to a website.
The sources for the curricular materials used in the video production
unit come from Satellite’s work with the Educational Video Center.
A detailed outline of the lesson plans and sources for this unit as developed
in connection with EVC will be provided on the Satellite-EVC Media Literacy
web page (under construction).
State Standards:
The course is aligned with New
York State English Language Arts Standards 1.1 and 1.2 and 4.1 and 4.2.
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