Today's Leaders Are Starting Off Young

It's interesting how much can be gained and lost by growing up. It seems fact that the longer you've been alive, the more you know, but comparing interviews with Bradlie Yanniello, a high school senior, and Jonathan Ouf, a 1st grader (with a 3rd grade reading level, he'll have everyone know), Jonathan has seemingly obvious points that Bradlie missed completely. As our minds mature, we often forget the simple things that carry the most importance. That being said, Bradlie was able to articulate the more complicated aspects of being a student leader and perhaps more practical ideas. (When asked what Jonathan had to offer to his classmates as a leader, he responded, "I can give DSI's and Macs to everyone I know and also, anything with my imagination").

The point is, leaders are learners and we must recognize that just as young leaders learn from us, we have just as much to learn from them. Leaders are the present, not the future. Today's leaders are the students who are still learning, still figuring out their goals, viewpoints, and passions, and contain a drive to set an example and make a statement. Student leaders aren't waiting around to step up their game for 'adulthood'; they're leading now.

Bradlie Yanniello is a senior at the Lehigh Valley Charter High School for the Performing Arts. Her role as a student leader is to ensure that "people can become more resourceful of what they have and more creative when these resources are not readily accessible". Bradlie believes that being a leader is being able to take command while still listening to the input of her peers and helping the whole to consider each others' thoughts. Jonathan stated simply: "A leader is like a captain".
Bradlie is interested in earning the trust of her peers before she can really appear to them as a leader. She says,"Taking on a leadership position makes you view people in a straight-forward way. Leading people makes you more aware of human behavior and how humans react to you, ultimately deciding how they will follow you". She also goes on to say that people all have their own way of leading and although educational leadership courses can be helpful to some, others are born leaders and ultimately, all leaders learn through experience.

Both Jonathan and Bradlie agree that being a student leader has different responsibilities than leaders who are out of school and/or older. Students have to earn a different kind of respect from their peers that our elders often gain automatically. Whereas Bradlie says that "You become a leader with experience, not calculus", Jonathan is very excited about the idea of college courses in leadership. He sees this as a "great opportunity to do lots of stuff". Jonathan's very optimistic about learning and although quite confident in his leadership skills, never defends himself at the thought of learning more skills.

The last question I asked in my interview was: What permanent changes do you plan on making in your school, community, or people? Jonathan replied: "To help people feel better and if they’re sad I can cheer them up. And that’s just a lot of great stuff." He responded as though it was an obvious answer. But isn't this really the core reason of why we are all leaders? To help people. We get so easily tangled in our maturing minds, looking for scholarly responses with big words and fancy ideas and we often look right past the most important and sincere answers. Children can state things so simply that adults, college students, and high school seniors like Bradlie strive to say in complicated and involved thoughts.
When everything is stripped away, we're leaders to help people. You don't need experience or wisdom to do that.