Developing Young Leaders Through Storytelling

Effective leaders must be skilled storytellers. Search the internet, and you’ll find a myriad of articles confirming the critical importance of this emerging leadership skill. Especially amidst the rise of AI content generators — which can be helpful tools but are incapable of reading a room — it’s important that leaders can draw upon their empathy to connect in authentic and meaningful ways, harnessing the power of storytelling to excite and inspire others.

At The Elisabeth Morrow School, our students begin to hone their storytelling skills at a very young age. Already having established several of the building blocks of effective storytelling, including self-advocacy and active listening, in our 2s program, children call upon these developing skills to give class presentations while in our 3s/4s program.

Cultivating Empathy Through Shared Experiences

Through a year-long curriculum focused on community building, our 3s/4s students explore questions like, “How are we the same and how are we different?” and use storytelling to share their findings.

Students in our 3s/4s classrooms explored similarities and differences among their families’ mealtimes, using a stuffed animal as their vehicle for storytelling. Each student took the stuffed animal home to share mealtime with their family and documented the occasion in a classroom journal using photos, drawings, and personal reflections, with parents, caregivers, and extended family participating. At school the following day, students presented their mealtime experience to classmates and teachers. Teachers encouraged classmates to ask questions about the presenter’s activities and invited them to compare and contrast the animal’s adventures in different homes.

“Developing leadership skills is a journey,” says Head of Early Learning Lauren Mactas. “It’s about each child knowing they have a voice, something to share with others, and learning to listen and learn from those with different experiences.” This ethos equips our youngest students with the skills and values to emerge as confident and ethical leaders.

Through these storytelling exercises, children gain confidence in articulating their experiences and begin to understand what it means to engage an audience. In addition, they learn to appreciate the importance of learning from one another and valuing our differences.

A Thread Through Divisions

As students progress through the early learning division and lower school, they further develop their leadership capabilities by participating in larger group activities and tackling increasingly complex subject matters. For instance, our fourth graders take turns speaking in front of their Little School peers at the weekly assembly, and they address our middle school students in Morrow House when presenting the chosen activism project for their grade. Through these opportunities, the students learn the power of their voice, regardless of their age, and the importance of advocating for themselves and others. Students gain confidence through speaking opportunities, and teachers take pride in noting each student’s transformation of presence before beginning middle school.

By the time our students reach Morrow House, they have become skilled leaders who are equipped to persuade others to their point of view with their storytelling skillset, as they did during a Leadership Lab event for our eighth graders called “This I Believe.” Leadership Lab is a two-year curriculum that challenges our seventh and eighth graders to tackle projects that require high levels of collaboration, creativity, communication, and critical thinking. In “This I Believe,” they presented original, dynamic talks about the most important value in their lives.

Ultimately, our students’ leadership journey culminates in eighth grade, with our soon-to-be graduates using storytelling to communicate where they see themselves and who they are striving to become as they apply to and interview with the secondary schools they believe are best suited to help them thrive.