If you ask any veteran teacher to name the qualities of a good culture versus one that is merely surviving, the response will not be facilities or funding. It will be ownership. This is evidenced by the different behaviors of students who feel the school belongs to them versus those who only attend it.
The problem is that ownership is not an enforced standard but something that is developed and practiced.
This is the case for a student engagement curriculum for schools that practice leadership as an ongoing philosophy instead of an event. Student leadership produces demonstrable gains in the areas that matter most to administrators: attendance, behavior and academic effort.
The Ownership-Engagement Connection
Students who lead care more, and research backs this up. A longitudinal study on student agency found that self-efficacy (a student’s sense of personal efficacy to outcomes) is a buffer to disengagement in middle and high school and personal agency is a catalyst for academic success (ScienceDirect). Practically, the more the student has to say about their experience, the more likely they are to be invested in the result.
This is also manifested outside of the school environment. The volunteer who planned the neighborhood cleanup shows up early. The employee who designed the new process advocates for it in the break room. Ownership will lead to advocacy and advocacy is the foundation of engagement. Schools that also allow students to have a real leadership role (not just a title!) in the classroom are demonstrating the same principle.
Student leadership programs have seen these benefits in schools firsthand. Longitudinal data of schools that employed student leadership models showed improvements in attendance, discipline referrals and academic performance in those years after implementation where teachers overwhelmingly attributed the change to the leadership model (Leader in Me). And this is not coincidental; it’s a demonstration of how students go from being consumers to contributors to school.
What Peer-Led Discussion Does for Belonging
Academic content can be delivered by anybody who can stand at the front of the room. Belonging cannot be delivered at all. It is something that’s created between humans, and for adolescents that’s peers. This is why peer-led discussion is as important as content.
If students lead a circle discussion instead of sitting through a lecture, they are entrusted with a true responsibility: the emotional climate of the room, the direction of the conversation, and their classmates’ emotional openness. Trust is reciprocal; students trusted to lead are more likely to invest in the group, and students who are heard in the group are more likely to engage with it.
A peer-driven culture based on discussion transforms the dynamic of the classroom from the place where students move through to the one where they belong. A student showing up at bare minimum to avoid the repercussions is not the same as one who shows up because the room needs them.
How iLead Builds Contributors, Not Just Consumers
This is the ethos behind Growing Leaders’ iLead curriculum, where students are in the circle to engage in discussion and take on real-world challenges to practice self-leadership before being asked to lead others. It is peer-led by design, because belonging and ownership cannot be dictated from the front of the room but rather is learned, session after session, by peers.
These are the results schools have seen. Growing Leaders has seen a 78% decrease in discipline referrals among high participation groups and a 2.4x increase in student-reported self-confidence after iLead was introduced (Growing Leaders). This is an example of how behavior and investment change when incentives change. A student who has been instrumental in the development of their culture has an interest in preserving it.
Everything rises and falls on leadership, including the question of whether students see themselves as part of building a school or beholden to it. Advisory periods, CTE tracks and after-school clubs are the natural fit for this, but the question is whether that time is devoted to providing more content or building the self-leadership and peer-leadership skills to make them want to invest in the culture around them.
From Rows to Circles, One Advisory Period at a Time
The change doesn’t have to be a complete redesign of the day and a big transformation but rather small changes: one advisory period, one CTE track, one after-school club where students actually have a true stake in the conversation. And it creates momentum because ownership becomes the way of life when you learn how to do it. A student who does well in a particular space often looks for other places to lead.
And that is the multiplication mindset of iLead: leaders who train leaders, in circles that grow as confidence builds. It is a slower process than a behavior policy but a much more sustainable one because it reorients how students view their role in the building.
Build a School Culture Students Want to Invest In
If you are looking for a student engagement curriculum for schools that turns ownership into demonstrable gains in attendance, behavior and academic effort, explore iLead at growingleaders.com and see how peer-led leadership can strengthen your school’s culture from the inside out.
