Activity: Leadership Autobiography or Biography: 6011C
Topic: Leadership Philosophies
Submitted by Sarah Milarch
Outcome: Students will recognize their personal leadership qualities and philosophies.
Time: 1-3 class periods (depending on length of the paper and out of class expectations)
Materials: Writing utensils, dictionaries, possibly computers with word processing capabilities.
Setting: Classroom and/or Media Center
Learning Activity: Students write their life stories from the perspective of their leadership
qualities (or perhaps passive, non-leadership qualities) (1-2 pages). They consider how they
believe they attained these qualities (what influenced them to be the way they are), and how that
has impacted them in the past, how it is currently impacting them, and how they anticipate it to
impact them in the future. The students should try to recall specific examples to illustrate their
points. If this is too challenging for some students, they might consider writing a biography of
someone they know who is a strong leader (or who perhaps is not a strong leader), and consider
the same topics/questions those writing an autobiography would address.
Assessment: This could be a formal writing piece for the students’ portfolios (MEAP, etc.) for a
non-English course. Attention to clarity of ideas on general ability to communicate clearly
through writing should be considered. Additional points would then be assigned based on
specific requirements (page length, topics addressed, visual appeal, etc.).
Key Points:
1. Writing is an important tool of thought processing and communication.
2. Individuals are impacted by their leadership philosophies.
3. Individual leadership philosophies impact others.