How Schools Can Cultivate Future Leaders With the Help of Afterschool Activities

A school is a kid’s second home. Thus, the school can have a significant influence on the growth and development of the children.

Parents and schools alike should focus on efforts that create future leaders within a child. Future leaders lead successful and satisfactory lives, so a lot of parents want that for their kids’ future. With that said, schools have the ability to cultivate these in the kids.

One of the ways to do this is through afterschool activities. Classroom activities are fine, but afterschool activities put kids outside of overly curated environments. This challenges them in newer possible ways.

With that in mind, we’ve listed some ways on how afterschool activities can bring out the leader in your kids.

Improves Academic Performances

One of the factors that can indicate the possibility of a child becoming a future leader is through academic performance. Of course, it doesn’t mean all leaders have good academic performance, but it certainly does more good than bad.

On that note, afterschool activities challenge students through situations and activities that sharpen their logic and their analytical skills. Due to the fact that afterschool activities don’t subscribe to textbook-like problems, it puts students outside of the familiar territory.

In turn, this improvement in logic will have a positive effect on their overall academic performance. It teaches them to look at problems from different angles, making them better at analysis and problem-solving.

Being better at academic performance can help give your kids more opportunities than they would have otherwise. Therefore, even though academic performance is not a sure indication of a child’s future success, it is still nice to have.

Boosts Self-Esteem

Afterschool activities can help make students much more aware of who they are and what their capabilities are. These activities test the limits of students’ abilities. When kids overcome challenges, they have a more positive view of themselves.

Having good self-esteem enables students to grow into well-functioning adults. The positive sense of self will help create adults with confidence about them. With confidence, people are much more likely to follow them.

Aside from being good leaders, self-esteem is important during times of trial and discouragement.

Sometimes in life, people will walk a lonely path where no one believes in them and self-esteem can help keep them strong during these trying times. It helps people not be as mentally affected by discouragement. It will make them much more able to take criticism in stride and use it to fuel themselves and propel their future forward.

Fosters Teamwork and Strategic Thinking

Outdoor school activities usually encourage working with a team. It’s often a way to bond between peers and at the same time, it’s a fun way of creating lessons and improving students’ skills.

Even if you have introverted children who don’t prefer too athletic activities, there are plenty of alternatives. Scrabble is a fun yet challenging activity that requires more than one participant. It’s also a way to sharpen one’s linguistic skills.

With afterschool activities, children learn how to compromise with others to achieve a goal. Compromise and playing with others are important in honing the social skills of students which are vital for any budding leader of the future. 

Provides Social Opportunities

Speaking of social skills among kids, afterschool activities give kids more chances to socialize with their peers.

Although school time is a chance to socialize, it’s different with afterschool activities.

Even if kids are under the care of proper authorities, their social interactions aren’t based on academic performances or activities. There are no grades involved in their interactions. Plus, there is more variety to the kinds of social situations that they get themselves into in comparison to school-based socialization.

If you want kids to be more like leaders, then they have to be able to handle all sorts of situations. Afterschool activities are a good way of doing that.

Develops Life Skills

Last but not least, when you expose kids to more afterschool activities, they get to develop much more life skills. After all, life isn’t quite like how the books say it is. Most problems that they will encounter in life isn’t so cut and dry.

With afterschool activities, students will have to learn all sorts of life skills. They will have to learn how to speak in public. They will also learn some technical skills depending on the type of afterschool activity.

Perhaps the activity is all about athleticism. Kids will be much more aware of their bodies and their hand-eye coordination. There could also be activities like learning how to code, which exercises their mental capacity.

Afterschool activities are a chance to explore and to seek new opportunities and challenges that help kids be better equipped for life and all its challenges.

Cultivating students to be future leaders is a long and arduous task. Plus, the results are almost never a guarantee. However, investing in more afterschool activities is a step in the right direction.