Student Leadership Development: Wild and Worth It
As Christian educators, we understand our responsibility to focus on the whole child. As James K.A. Smith declares in You Are What You Love, we are more than “brains on a stick.” Thus, our classrooms and programming must extend beyond sharpening our students’ minds to focus on cultivating their hearts and affections. Providing students with authentic opportunities to grow as effective, winsome leaders allows them to understand their role in building community. We know student leadership can be messy and wild as they often learn through mistakes and reflection. However, providing the “lab” space for them to work through these growing pains is essential as we raise up the next generation of Christian leaders.
In the 2025-26 school year, Whitefield’s Student Leadership Institute (SLI) turned seven years-old. I also completed my seventh year as Upper School Principal last school year. Before serving in this role, I was part of the Upper School faculty and staff for several years. Watching SLI launch, grow, and deepen has been such a fulfilling part of serving in my role. As I reflect, I clearly see how the Lord brought people and resources together in His timing to support our effort to equip and empower Christian leaders. Before 2019-20, students who were looking for opportunities to lead had limited options available. Back then, students could serve on Honor Council, in student government, as senior mentors, or as student athletic trainers. In addition to limited options, our old schedule did not provide time for students to engage in leadership development and to prepare for their service opportunities. I have vivid memories of the senior mentors scrambling around before school on Friday mornings trying to figure out what to do with their freshmen mentees in advisory ten minutes later. They simply did not have time or support to effectively prepare. Whitefield did not lack eager students or invested faculty. We just needed the vision and resources to pour into students in this way.
Director of Student Leadership Mike Shaheen brought vision, passion, and experience in student leadership to Whitefield. At the same time he joined the team, the school was in a schedule review process through which reflection on our mission, research into best practices, and feedback from faculty and students revealed the need for our schedule to carve out time beyond academic classes for students to grow as leaders. God’s timing is awesome! For such a time as this, He brought a visionary and the resources to develop what is now a thriving Student Leadership Institute constituting 11 different institutes and a Student Executive Leadership Team. Through SLI, invested advisors ensure students engage in leadership development curriculum aligned to our Christ-centered mission, and give students space to truly design, prepare, serve, and lead.
We know leadership is not glamorous. Christ is our example. The Lord came to serve, not be served. He washed His disciples’ feet. He spoke hard Truth in love to all those with whom He interacted, including those closest to Him. His leadership brought Him to the cross where He paid the ultimate penalty for our sin. In Leading with a Limp, Dr. Dan B. Allender submits that “in order to reclaim the joy and passion of leadership, we must walk the valley of the shadow of death and name the cost of leadership” (p. 28). I am so thankful that our students’ early experiences in journeying through the costs of leadership come within the context of a grace-driven, Christ-centered community. Our student-leaders’ faithful advisors counsel and coach them through the challenges of the leadership journey, or “a walk on the wild side,” as Dr. Allender describes it.
As Christian educators, our goal is that our students will engage in student leadership programming to be challenged and to contribute, not just to add something to their personal resume. Our aim is that students grow their strengths and natural abilities while also recognizing they are a “limping leader” who learns to “fall forward into the strong arms of grace” (Allender, p. 199). In a Never Enough culture in which our students are “absorbing the idea that their worth is contingent on their performance–their GPA, the number of social media followers they have, their college brands–not for who they are deep at their core,” Christian schools have an opportunity to develop programming that points students to their identity in Christ and their responsibility to use the gifts he has given them to build the kingdom up in Truth and love (Wallace, xviii). While Whitefield Academy’s Student Leadership Institute is one avenue for our students to grow into leaders who understand their purpose, all of our schools have these hallmark programs. I encourage us to continue reflecting on our work and refining our efforts to evaluate outcomes in terms of our schools’ missions, ensuring our students understand that godly leadership is about serving others and sacrifice, not about achievement and self-promotion.
Jen Wood, Upper School Principal, Whitefield Academy
Jen Woods has been a member of the Whitefield Academy community since 2010 and has served as Upper School Principal since 2019. Having attended public schools throughout her own education, she has developed a deep appreciation for Whitefield’s unapologetically Christ-centered mission, which challenges students academically while fostering meaningful spiritual growth.
Jen and her husband, Josh, are the parents of two daughters, Anna Lynn (grade 9) and Halle (grade 7), both of whom attend Whitefield Academy. Outside of school, the Woods family enjoys all things sports, including Whitefield athletics, their girls’ travel softball and club soccer games, and Atlanta Braves baseball. Jen also serves as an assistant varsity softball coach at Whitefield.
CESA Partnership Spotlight
Beyond the Hype: AI Strategies Driving Outcomes in Christian Schools
There is still time to launch your AI strategy for 2026-27. Join this free webinar on August 27 to see what’s working in hundreds of Christian schools right now: an on-demand tutor with real boundaries, a biblical worldview, and personalized instruction that meets every learner at their level.