Trait Leadership in a Preschool Classroom

As a preschool teacher I saw all kinds of leaders and followers from year to year. Every class had it’s strong personalities and the kids who were happy to let someone else decide what game to play next. Some of the kids were already leaders and some had the traits that I now recognize will make them amazing leaders in the future. Reading the list of the five major leadership traits (Northouse, 2019) reminded me of some of the three-year old leaders that passed through my classroom in years past.

Intelligence – W. was a generally a quiet kid but he had something that the other kids recognized as important. W. could read. He could on the very first day of school, when some of his peers were still learning to recognize all of the letters. W. was not a kid that you think would be leader. He was quiet, introverted and generally didn’t really care if he played by himself or with other kids. As the weeks went on and the school year started to really take shape, I noticed that the other kids sought W. out. If he was reading and a classmate asked him to, he would read out loud. A group of friends developed, with W. as it’s leader. They were a sweet group of kids and could generally be found in the quite corner huddled around a book. They were a tight group of friends until they all went off to kindergarten.

Self-Confidence – C. was the son of fellow teacher and red-headed spitfire. His favorite color was black and he only played a game if he thought the rules made sense. He was, in some ways, mature beyond his years. C. was not a very popular kid but he had a core group of friends that had, for whatever reason, decided that it was worth it to let C. make the vast majority of decisions during their time together. The very self-confidence that made C. a great leader to his friends also caused him to be quite a headache to myself and my co-teacher. He questioned every rule until he accepted that the rule was necessary. I admired C.’s ability to argue a point with me even when it drove me crazy. I still miss him and remember conversations that we had now that he is in middle school.

Determination – S. came to my class from a two-year old teacher who told me that she could do anything if you gave her enough time to figure out how to accomplish it. I saw this firsthand the first time that S. needed to wash her hands in the small classroom bathroom. S. was a little shorter than her peers (she still is) and couldn’t reach the taps to turn the water off and on. No problem, we had a step stool for just such a problem. S. politely waited until we had stepped back and then moved the step stool to the side. She stood on her tiptoes and reached as far as her fingers could go. She could reach the taps but not turn them. I though for sure that she would see that she needed the step stool at that point. I watched as she stepped back from the sink, took a minute to think and then hopped up until she was balancing on her stomach on the edge of the sink. She could now reach the taps on her own, no step stool required. S. was like that in all things. S. is now eleven and just appeared on a baking competition on television. She was still the shortest one but it didn’t stop her from winning.

Integrity – Most three-year-olds have integrity. The default is usually honesty in kids that age. G. was trustworthy to a fault. She may have been considered a tattletale by some of her peers who had already discovered the benefits of the occasional white lie. G. didn’t care if it made the other kids upset, she always told the truth and looked out for her classmates. In the history of all of the three-year-olds that I was lucky enough to teach, G. was the only one that I could have entrusted with going to find help from another adult if we had an emergency. I knew that if sent G. to find help she would have understood the gravity of the situation and kept to the task at hand, never getting distracted by a sticker on the floor or a toy left unattended in the gym. G. had and has integrity. As a six-year-old now, she shines in her first-grade class as one of the kids that the teachers can trust to run an errand. G. will mostly likely be a judge someday where she will finally get to be right for a living.

Sociability – J. was a new student who started mid-year. This can be a very tricky time for a three-year-old to start as the kids have formed their social groups and a new kid can struggle to find a place to fit in. Not J. He was like a magnet for friends. He didn’t have the same hesitations that many kids have about approaching other kids to play. On the first day of class he went right up to a group of boys building in the block center and asked if he could build with them. That’s all it took, J. was off. J. and that group of boys settled in to a friendship that lasted long past pre-k, as most of them went to the same elementary school. J. was one of the easiest kids to talk to that I met in my years as a teacher. He always seemed interested in what that other kids had to say and asked questions that showed that he was listening. J. was a natural born leader and I’m sure that even now, as a teenager, he is the kind of person who has tons of friends and cares about them all.

Working with kids allows you to see every type of personality, leader and follower. I’m excited to see how the rest of the semester is reflected in my memories of my students.