LEAP: Leadership Experience Advisement Program for Grade 6

Focusing on team building, MVIFI (Mount Vernon Institute for Innovation) leaders designed and facilitated a half-day event for the entire sixth grade, layered in the Captain-Crew-Passenger method of dynamic leadership.
Broken into their advisory groups, students participated in an outdoor/experiential educational model, threading a story through the process of action, application, and purposeful reflection.
After participating in activities such as: Trust Fall, Bull Ring, Stump Jumping, Alligator Boards, and Moon Ball, students were asked to reflect on the following questions:
Was there a certain person who acted as the captain of the group?
What specific attributes made that so?
What role did you play?
Why do you think you chose to adopt this role?
What was the most difficult aspect of this challenge for you?
What surprised you?
What did you notice about yourself?
What role do you normally play in your life at Mount Vernon?
Sixth grade student Blythe Graham reflects, “My friends and I thought we would be writing or doing something that we do every other day, but were pleasantly surprised to see that we were doing collaborative, hands-on activities. It was very new to me to be outdoors and without any electronics because the School has many different electronics and we base most activities off of them. I was excited to try something new. I feel like our grade is so much more collaborative than it was before. We have a bunch more group activities and/or choice of a partner.”