The Game : Different Uses for Dare to Lead!

"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein

In any given population, 20% will be positive leaders, 20% will be negative leaders, and 60% will be followers. The followers will follow whichever 20% is strongest. Which one are you?

Dare to Lead! is an interactive board game designed for leadership. Originally planned for a student leadership class, it was further developed to where it is used today for leadership classes, retreats, student council, personal planning, church youth groups and more!

What the world now identifies as critical thinking, we have always called leadership. Dare to Lead! takes critical thinking to the next level.

History

Dare to Lead! is a product of two leadership teachers in the Mission School District in the Fraser Valley of British Columbia. Deb Kooy and Al LaFontaine used to co-teach leadership to over 60 leadership students at Hatzic Secondary in Mission. They have since moved to Heritage Park Secondary, where they both teach leadership. They eventually developed their first version of Dare to Lead! for their leadership classes and were quite pleased with how the lesson was received by the students.

Shortly after this, they presented their final version of Dare to Lead! at a B.C. Student Leadership Conference. They were then asked to present it at another conference, and later presented at a Canadian Student Leadership Conference. By now, it was obvious that others wanted this resource for their programs, and Dare to Lead! Inc. was born.

About the Game

Dare to Lead! is an innovative, flexible new learning tool for students and adults. It can be used for leadership classes, CAPP classes, Planning 10, retreats (both school and corporate), and individual lesson topics.

This game is designed for individuals and/or groups to work their way through questions that require problem solving ability, the power of persuasion, group dynamics and co-operation, taking a stand on issues or dilemmas, and creative thinking.

Its Tons of fun with Lots of Learning!!

Educational Value

The educational value of Dare to Lead! is never ending. Each task card can lead to a different outcome at any given school.

For example, in the task below, you are asked to find the number of squares in the diagram.

Most quickly answer 16, then 17 and then numbers start to flow. 20, 22, 26, 28...

This can be debriefed a number of ways.

• What does this teach us? It teaches us to look deeper, to not take things at face value and the deeper we look, the more we find.

This can then lead to a specific topic at a school:

• Bullying - Do we need to look deeper into this to understand why it happens before we address it?
• Meeting people - How quickly do we judge people?
• Cliques in schools - Why do they exist, do we actually know what each clique is about or do we just make surface assumptions?
• Is there an issue in our school that we haven't looked deeply enough into, that could be taken up as a class project?
  • Racism
  • Inclusion of special needs
  • Litter
  • Vandalism
  • Smoking (Do people smoke to be cool, or is it because it puts them into a group at the smoke pit each day where they feel accepted?)
  • Drinking, Drugs
• What is good about our school? - List all the examples the class can think of to show pride in your school. This can be in the form of brainstorming on paper or on the board, or as a mascot scrabble (go to the sidewalk in the front of your school, and in chalk, write the name of your school mascot. From there, students, in teams, write as many of the successful programs at your school off the name in a Scrabble Fashion).

This is just one example of where one of the task cards can lead...