On March 10, 2021, Faribault High School (FHS) Activities Director Keith Badger presented FHS’ Student Athlete Leadership program. At the outset, Keith outlined his discussion providing a brief history of the leadership class, what FHS is doing currently with the class and what the school plans to do in the future as well as what students who participate in the class will learn.
Keith described graduating from University of Saint Thomas and then eventually working at a high school in New Richland, Wisconsin where he taught Physical Education and coached football in New Richland, he started teaching leadership.
Keith stressed leadership was the foundation of any successful organization. Knowing how valuable effective leadership is, he said that a leadership program had to be part of any organizations he belonged to. He observed aloud teams have losing years. Often the description of an unsuccessful team was that the team did not have any leaders. However, teams could have down years, but a team with strong leadership would sustain the organization through difficult seasons. Using the “no leaders” excuse ultimately did not reflect who was accountable for not having developed leaders. The school must develop leaders as it develops all students in the school.
Sports do not inherently teach character and leadership but coaches and participants in activities can develop leadership in others. Keith recalled when he first started the New Richland program only 6 kids showed up for the class. As he was teaching the leadership program, he discovered that his personal standard of behavior was lower than what he expected leaders in the program to be. As a result, he strived to raise his own behavior to match the expectations he was setting in his class.
Keith stated students want to be challenged to become better. In this vein, he would ask his leadership students what they wanted to change and then empower them to try to make change. When he left New Richland to come to Faribault to be the Activities Director, Keith already knew that effective leadership among a school community can change the culture of a school.
Keith noted that as the Activities Director he sits in his office and mostly interacts with adults all day rather than students. For this reason, he challenged the FHS coaches to embrace leadership education. Each week he wanted a new coach to stand before the students involved in leadership education to discuss their views on leadership. He felt it is important for different coaches to impart their wisdom and experience to the student athletes that they might not normally have the opportunity to engage.
Keith emphasized his view that to change a culture the students needed to be challenged to be better and empowered. In Faribault, he said FHS holds an initial “icebreaker” meeting at 7:00 AM. Even though FHS should be thought of as a middle-sized school, he quickly discovered most kids do not know each other. Having met and talked with each other broke down barriers and eased discussion. Usually the class would watch a “Growing Leaders” video, break out into small groups to discuss and then rejoin their classmates to talk about what they had learned.
Keith also highlighted that he expected participants in the leadership class to treat FHS as their home and invite their fellow students into the building as if they were their guests. As an example, he has had the group wear clothing that identifies them as FHS student athletes and then had them hold the doors open for their fellow FHS students to make them feel welcome. Using the example of a thermostat or a thermometer, Keith highlighted he wanted all the students to be thermostats setting the culture and energy in the school. All the students have great potential and can do anything they want to achieve. He noted that with a strong attitude plus great effort people can achieve great things.
With the advent of the 7-period school day at FHS, Keith commented it was a great opportunity to get leadership training into the classroom (i.e., not starting at 7 AM before the official start of school). In the coming year, leadership classes – Leadership class 1 and 2 – will be taught throughout the school year.
Rotarians asked questions about how to get these valuable leadership lessons and teachings to younger students. Keith said he hoped to impart FHS’s leadership ethos to youth coaches and he agreed that using older student athletes to mentor younger ones was a good idea.
