🌟 Celebrating Leadership: Every Child is a Leader!

In our Elementary School, we have embraced a powerful philosophy: every child who wants to lead, gets to lead! A few years ago, we moved away from the traditional model of a single elected student council member per class and instead created a more inclusive leadership model, where we invited every Grade 4 and 5 student interested in making a difference to join our thriving leadership programme.

This year, we are proud to celebrate more than 80 student leaders dedicated to improving our school community. These students are currently organized across four core groups: Peace and Justice, Library, Technology, and Assembly Leaders. Students may join (or leave) our student leadership groups at any time throughout the year – they are always open.  
Our student leaders are driving meaningful change every day.

This semester:

- Assembly Leaders co-lead and present engaging Upper ES assemblies every second week with Mr. Josh. Grade 1 students are assembly leaders too, working with Ms Nitasha to host our Lower ES assemblies. These young leaders are confident communicators who bring our ES community together.

- Library Leaders, working with Ms J, regularly read us stories on assembly, organise competitions and work hard to create a community of readers in the Elementary School. Their initiatives this semester have included:

• Guess the book by the emoji quizzes
• Guess the reader quiz
• Library scavenger hunt
• Posters for the library (lunch recess, Battle of the Books)
• Book display for reading the SDGs
• Students are also working on organizing book week, putting together book recommendation posters, planning bookmark making workshops, and planning a “Who is UNIS Hanoi’s favorite book character”
• Winter Reading Contest

- Technology Leaders, working with Mr ‘Big C’ are immersed in digital design and media production. Using Mac laptops, these students are mastering 3D modelling with Tinkercad and operating our 3D printer to bring their designs to life. They are applying this knowledge to solve real-world problems by designing and printing innovations for our school. Additionally, the ES Film Crew subset is gaining hands-on experience with film gear and video editing to create compelling stories. We celebrate their problem-solving and dedication to digital innovation!

- Peace and Justice Leaders, in partnership with Ms. Jen, are focused on actively enhancing our school community’s well-being. Building on action research started last year (which included playground observations and staff interviews), the group successfully established a Community Table during Friday afternoon recess outside the Grade 5 classrooms.  This initiative, stocked with resources like card games, origami, and mindful coloring, aims to provide an intentional space for connection and support students who may not always feel included. Moving forward, the Peace and Justice leaders plan to select an additional area of focus in January related to identity-based harm.

Additionally, a number of our leaders participated in a “Dream Summit” with consultant Homa Tavangar in September as part of our strategic planning work, and others recently met with Dr Gale to review data from our all-access toilets pilot, providing insightful feedback and suggestions to administration. They are confidently using their voices to make a difference.  

We are incredibly proud of how our student leaders actively participate, propose new ideas, and take ownership in shaping a better school environment.  These student leaders, and the teachers mentoring them,  are living our values – responsibility, courage, curiosity, diversity, integrity and community – every day.  We celebrate their initiative, passion, and commitment to making UNIS Hanoi a truly special place.