What Kids Learn From Good (And Bad) Leadership In School Group Projects: Practical Parenting Tips
The brick wall by the middle school bike rack was still warm from the October sun when I spotted my 7th grader Zoe, backpack slipping off one shoulder, crumpling a science project flier in her fist. She didn’t wave when she saw me, just trudged to the car and slumped into the passenger seat. “Mia’s our group leader,” she said, before I even asked how her day was. “And she won’t let anyone do anything except what she wants.”
I nodded, because I still remember two group leaders from my own middle school days, clear as that brick wall. There was Jake, who volunteered to lead our 9th grade history project, then assigned all of us research and note-taking while he spent after-school meetings playing Xbox at his house. We got a B minus, and I spent the rest of the semester resenting every group work assignment. That’s the kind of leader you survive, not remember. Then there was Lila, who led our 8th grade canned food drive. I’d never been asked to lead anything back then, but she pulled me aside after the first meeting and asked if I’d make the flyers, because she’d seen my notebook doodles and heard I liked writing. She split the neighborhood routes based on who lived where, swapped shifts when someone had a game, and we collected twice as many cans as any other homeroom. I haven’t thought about that drive in 20 years, but I still remember how it felt to have her see something I could contribute.
For Zoe’s ecosystem project, Mia had decided a diorama of the local creek was the only acceptable project. Zoe had come up with the original idea of adding a section on recent stormwater pollution – she’d spent a weekend testing water samples with my dad, who’s a park ranger – but Mia shut it down. “Too depressing,” she told the group. “Dioramas get extra credit, trust me.” All Zoe got to do was cut green construction paper for the grass.
I didn’t pull out my phone to email the teacher that night. I’ve been a 4th grade teacher long enough to know that most teachers assign group work specifically to let kids work through these messes, and jumping in too fast robs them of that. Instead, I asked her what the worst part was, and what she wanted to change. She said she didn’t want to fight with Mia – they’d been friends since elementary school and sat together at lunch – she just didn’t want all the work she’d already done on pollution to go to waste. So we practiced one specific line she could use at the next group meeting, something that didn’t challenge Mia’s leadership, just carved out space for her work: “I already put together this fact sheet about the creek pollution that people can take after our presentation. It won’t add any work for you, can we include it?”
It worked. Mia agreed, because it didn’t require her to do anything extra. When they got their grade back, the teacher specifically called out Zoe’s fact sheet as a standout contribution, and they got an A. It wasn’t a perfect fix – Zoe still says she doesn’t want to work with Mia again, and she’s right that Mia took all the credit for the diorama. But it was enough for Zoe to get what she wanted out of it, without burning a bridge.
We talk a lot about teaching kids leadership, but most of the time we just let them figure it out on their own. We let the loudest kid be the leader, or assign roles and call it a day, and we don’t stop to point out that the loudest kid isn’t always the best leader. Most kids grow up thinking leadership is just getting everyone to do what you want. That’s why we end up with so many leaders people just survive. The good kind, the kind people remember, is just paying attention to what other people can bring.
I’ve started doing a few small things with Zoe, and I used to do them with my students too, that don’t take any extra time. First, I never jump in to fix a bad leader situation until I ask what they want. Half the time, kids just want to vent, not have me rewrite the whole group. Second, I point out the small leadership they already do, so they know what good leadership looks like. When Zoe organized the soccer team snack swap last season, I pointed out that she asked everyone what they could afford before assigning snacks, and swapped shifts when someone had a conflict. That’s leadership, I told her – not just standing at the front talking. Most kids don’t connect those small, kind acts to leadership, because they only see the bossy version on display in class. Third, if it’s really bad – like if the leader is excluding a kid, or isn’t doing any work at all and the whole group is going to fail – I help her write a specific note to the teacher asking for individual contribution grading, not a whole new group. Teachers almost always agree to that, because they know group projects can get messy.
Last month, Zoe’s social studies class did a group project on local civil rights leaders. The kid who volunteered to be leader bailed after a week to focus on his basketball tournament, so Zoe stepped up. I asked her how it went when she got home that night. She said she wrote down everyone’s idea on a scrap of paper, let each person pick the part they wanted to work on, and even shifted the whole project focus when one of her group members said she wanted to talk about a local Black teacher who’d desegregated the school, instead of the city mayor they’d originally picked. After the presentation, one of the other girls in the group told Zoe it was the best group project she’d ever been part of, because no one felt left out.
Zoe told me that over tacos last week, and she smiled a little like she was surprised it worked. I didn’t give her a big speech about being a good leader. I just nodded and said that’s the kind people remember, right? She agreed. We still have rough days. She gets stuck with bossy leaders, she gets too bossy when she’s leading sometimes, she still gets nervous to speak up when things aren’t fair. It’s not like we’ve cracked the code on leadership or anything. But little by little, she’s learning the difference between the ones you survive, and the ones people carry with them.
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