Leaders or Stars?

WORD MATTERS

What is a Star of the Day?

Many kindergarten classrooms use a Star of the Day system. This is a classroom management system where each day one student is selected to receive special treatment. For example, they get to be first in line, they get to chose the day's story, they get to pick people to eat at their Star Table, ... etc. Often classrooms use a posted schedule to let children know whose turn it is to be the next Star.

Why is there a Star of the Day?

All classroom staff have their own reasons for setting up a Star of the Day program. The most frequent reason I hear is to reduce conflicts between students who fight about being first in line. My thoughts on classroom lineups are shared in this blog post: https://www.tatamoc.com/post/mixed-messages-lineups Another common reason is staff want each child to have a day where they have a chance to feel special. Many use it as a classroom management technique by default simply because it something they see other staff use.

Star of the Day through a Learning Lens

When intentionally creating classroom environments I try to view the options through a Learning Lens. In this case I would ask what specific skill or experience is being offered for every student with a Star of the Day system?

In a typical Ontario kindergarten classroom with nearly 30 students, each child gets to be the Star once every 25th to 30th weekday; which is roughly once every six weeks, or about six times in the entire school year. Conversely, they are not a Star 25 to 30 times in a row, which is almost six weeks straight of being told "No, not your turn", or approximately 90% of their time in school.

Welcoming new kindergarten students to your classroom by telling young three and four year old new learners that there is a special system in place to be a Star, but that 90% of the time it doesn't apply to them is unlikely to foster a positive, engaged community or learning environment.

Leadership Learning

If I reflect on what makes a good leader I can think of many moments on a daily basis to provide students with opportunities to explore their own leadership skills as well as consider what qualities they might value in their own current and future leaders.

Rather than creating a system where students might obsess on being the next Star while having little personal interest in who is the current Star, I would like to foster social and emotional skills that support valuing each child's participation and contribution opportunities within a community.

This blog post is part of my Word Matters collection where I consider the affect a simple word change might have on my classroom connections with students and how the change can alter my perspective on children's learning process.

Planning for how to incorporate experiences and discussions to build community connections through leadership and participation allows me to think far beyond what I could provide in a Star of the Day classroom management strategy.

Process not Product

Instead of having an educator created Star of the Day class list (Product) for the whole school year, I like to place a focus on the shared Process of learning about leadership, and what it means to the current students, by co-creating lists of leadership qualities, values, and responsibilities that the class would like to strive towards.

In the same way that kindergarten literacy programs provide experiences to support phonological awareness with the goal of building pathways towards successful reading and writing, a kindergarten leadership program focuses on building each student's own awareness of how they interact with their peers, staff, and visitors within a classroom and how, as leadership learners, they are valued members of the community.

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