Two years ago, I was walking down the hallway in my district’s lower-elementary school when I saw a student with a lanyard around their neck.
“Do you work here now?” I asked, playfully.
The student giggled. “No,” they replied, “I am a Hornet Helper!”
A Hornet Helper? I made a mental note to ask our principal about this clever alliteration based on our district’s mascot the next time I saw her.
In this biweekly column, principals and other authorities on school leadership—including researchers, education professors, district administrators, and assistant principals—offer timely and timeless advice for their peers.
Jessica Loggia, the principal of our school, later told me it was her new initiative to build student leaders by training volunteers during lunch times to support our school’s positive-behavior intervention and supports program.
The oldest students in this school are in 2nd grade. That is young to be called a leader, but it is also an age when children are beginning to understand who they can become. This small conversation made me realize that strong leaders can create more leaders.
We often think of leadership development as something reserved for middle or high school. Student government. Club officers. Captains. But what if leadership starts much earlier?
When I asked about the program’s origins, she told me that she wanted to create a culture where everyone has a role in making our school a better place. “With staff support, clear expectations, and students empowered to lead,” she said, “positive behaviors become contagious.” In other words, students are culture creators, too.
Long before Loggia was a principal, she was a 4th grade teacher. In her previous building, 4th graders were the oldest in the school, and she saw the pride they felt in reaching that milestone. She wanted to replicate it in a fresh way when she stepped into an administrative role.
Hornet Helpers made me think fondly back to my middle school principal, who was the first person who told me I could be a leader: Principal Frank Rudnesky. Each year, he would gather us in a schoolwide assembly and tell us each one of us had the potential to be a leader. While I was just one preteen face in the crowd, I internalized that message for the rest of my life. In fact, it was his resounding belief in all children that led me to pursue a career in education.
The belief I was a leader changed me. My principal’s belief became my own. When I graduated from high school and went to college, I didn’t have to worry about becoming a leader. I knew I was one. This idea came with incredible confidence. I could speak my mind, stand up to others, and take chances on unique opportunities because being a leader had somehow, over the years, become woven into my sense of self.
Ultimately, children remember which adults believe in them. Most educators are familiar with the Pygmalion effect, the idea that students rise to the level of expectation we hold for them. However, high expectations do not just shape academic outcomes, they can shape identity, too. A sense of self begins developing early and is shaped by the messages we receive about who we are and what we are capable of becoming.
Decades apart, Principal Rudnesky and Principal Loggia, I realized, had both arrived at the same educational philosophy: Students begin to see themselves as leaders when someone first sees them that way. Perhaps educators on a larger scale should lean into the idea that leadership is not for a select few but can be intentionally cultivated in everyone through structured opportunities, meaningful responsibility, and the belief in what students can become.
In Jessica Loggia’s school, every 2nd grader who wants to participate can join the program with parent permission. During their lunch training with her, students learn how leadership roles come with responsibility and that to be maintained, school expectations must be consistently modeled. Students are then matched to roles based on their strengths, when possible, to ensure they feel successful and take pride in their school contributions.
In the second year of Hornet Helpers, the program grew from a way for students to reinforce schoolwide expectation into a more comprehensive leadership program. Students moved beyond beginner skills like holding open the doors for others and began developing practical tools to make a meaningful difference in the school community. Using Stay-Play-Talk, an evidence-based intervention for early-childhood interactions, the principal and I trained the Hornet Helpers to support students with lagging social-emotional skills during “soft start,” the beginning period of the school day when students typically engage in table-top activities and during preschool playtime.
Hornet Helpers are easy to identify because of the pride they take in the role, often wearing their lanyards even when “off duty.” Each time I pass our little helpers, I wonder how they will carry our principal’s belief in them throughout their lives. I already have heard hallway chatter among the helpers about growing up to become preschool teachers. Maybe they will.
When I see Hornet Helpers walk confidently into preschool classrooms, I don’t just see 2nd graders helping younger students. I see a principal who understands that leadership is about more than being the ultimate decisionmaker and director of others. Leading is about helping people discover they have something meaningful to contribute.
Years from now, many of those children won’t remember every task they completed as Hornet Helpers. They may remember something even more important, that someone they trusted believed they were capable of leading. Their internal voice will say, “I am a leader.” That belief has the power to shape not only a school but a life. It certainly shaped mine.
