FLC – Challenges & Breakthroughs

Sessions for the Future Leaders’ Course (FLC) are in full swing now. We have 9 girls and 7 boys who come regularly. The girls are really engaged and are very open in class. One of our biggest challenges this week, however, has been engaging the boys in the course. I originally felt that maybe the class was not active enough, so we started integrating games like Coh-Coh and Frisbee. The boys enjoyed playing, but the objectives that we have defined are not being met: the same boys were talking and no one was very responsive to the other activities we had planned.
One breakthrough we had was after we presented the idea of the kids helping out at the Career Day and organizing their own Sports Day/5K Race. The energy level in the classes shot up instantly! There was talk of what needed to be done, how many people they would recruit to help, who would do what, etc. I recently read about how self-efficacy, or the belief that you can accomplish something, is more important than self-esteem, and I think that giving the “future leaders” these projects really speaks to that.
My next challenge, however, is to develop critical thinking skills. Someone recently sent me, “Teach Your Child How to Think.” by Edward DeBono. This has been very valuable in helping me think about how I should approach this. I’m going to try to incorporate thinking exercises into the event organizing process. If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know! .