environmental leaders. The L in MSEL stands for leadership. During the past couple weeks in MarinSEL, all our classes seem to have one focus: Leadership. Our teachers want us to learn how to professionally show our leadership skills. Right now, we are learning the skills that will help us become effective environmental leaders in the future.
In English, we have begun to write a paper about local heroes. All through
the year, our English class has been studying the hero’s journey. A
hero’s journey is a set of steps that the main character goes through
during the story. One of the criteria for our paper is an interview.
Every great leader must know how to ask effective, high level questions,
our English teacher Ms. Leonhart says. For the past week, the main
focus of our lesson has been how to ask questions. We learned about the
three levels of questions: Level one is your basic questions, for
example who is it? A level two question is more complex: it gets people
to use their knowledge and really think. The highest question is a level
three: it causes people to think creatively and intuitively. Another
way we learned about leadership was a TED talk by Simon Sinek we
watched . The talk explained a concept called the “golden circle,” a
three-ringed circle. In the first biggest circle, is the “what,” which
is what the leader is trying to do or master. The next circle is
described as the “how,” or how it will improve. The center circle, which
is the most important but asked least frequently, is the why. The why
is what drives highly effective leaders. Most people follow leaders who are driven by a deep
belief: “People don’t buy what you do; they buy WHY you do it.”
What drives us for being in MSEL constantly shows up in our projects. We get
to choose how we can make a difference in the community. Since it is
the beginning of the second semester, we have just started our second
project, for Project Week. Last week, was the first time we met with our
parent helpers for our group. While working, our parent gave us some
insight on how much our projects need leadership. My group is focusing
on creating a Zero Waste lunch program for Terra Linda High School. Each
step of the process to making a successful project takes leadership
skills. While thinking of ideas to do for our project, we had to be
intuitive. After a lot of thinking, we made a plan to create a waste
free lunch program. Since we need bins to do this, my group had to come
up with ways to get money. Using our problem solving leadership skills
we decided to make reusable t-shirt bags to sell at farmers markets.
Every step we take with our project we practice leadership skills.
The concept of questioning and inquiry shows up in our Seminar class too. In
seminar, our teacher Mrs. Frack gave us a lesson on professional emails.
In her class, we were assigned a paper called an I-search paper. Each
of us got to choose our own topic to write about. For our paper, we had
to find an expert to interview and send a professional email to.
Everyone in our class composed an email to an expert and sent it. It was
fascinating seeing how many of my peers got replies because the emails
were professional instead of our teenage texting type of email. For
example, one of my classmates emailed Bea Johnson from Zero Waste home
and she replied within a couple of hours to the questions emailed to
her.
Leadership skills are the most important part of a great leader. Learning how to make professional emails will greatly help us later in our lives, as will the ability to ask high level questions in all situations. In another text we read, a Chapter called “In Google We Trust” from the book The Death of Why, the author Andrea Shlessinger actually said that asking questions is at the root of a healthy democracy and society. Since we are among these future leaders in society, it is important for us to be able to ask questions. We are the next generation, the next leaders, business people, and parents. The skills we are learning right now in MSEL will greatly help us strive in the world outside Marin. The knowledge and skill of our generation affects the future of our earth.
Here is the link to the Simon Sinek TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html
United Gold Direct is here to ensure your future. In order for one to ensure his/her future, one must think his/her plans repeatedly in order for him/her to achieve positive results.
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