More Information about the
Intermediate Athletics II Leadership Course
at OELC
All of our athletics courses at OELC focus on developing students’ leadership skills through the medium of athletics. The ideal candidate is a student with an interest in athletics but in particular, a student with leadership potential who is willing to learn about themselves, about others and how to apply their skills in their school and/or community.
The course program is divided into two major areas: activity sessions and leadership development activities. The activity sessions involve team and individual sports, low ropes challenges, and intramural/tournament organizational sessions. These activities are intended to provide the students with leadership opportunities through peer support, skill development, and reflection on instructional and team-building techniques with the goal of gaining confidence to apply some of these strategies within their own context.
Specific leadership development sessions give students opportunities to explore various components of leadership: leadership styles, effective communication, group dynamics, problem-solving, organizational skills, and risk-taking in a non-threatening and encouraging environment and through well-planned experiential learning activities. OELC has a low ropes challenge course that is a rewarding and fun part of the leadership development sessions.
Opportunities for debriefing and reflection contribute greatly to the personal growth of students. Through the skilled facilitation of our teachers, often the greatest learning is reinforced through the analysis of elements which contribute to or detract from the success of an activity or challenge.
A typical day in the Intermediate Athletics II Leadership course might be:
| 7:30 | Breakfast |
| 9:00 | Leadership Development Session |
| 10:30 | Athletics Session |
| 12:30 | Lunch |
| 1:30 | Intramurals |
| 2:00 | Athletics Session |
| 3:30 | Free Swim/Tuck |
| 4:45 | Leadership Development Session |
| 6:00 | Dinner |
| 7:30 | Special Event |
| 8:45 | Debrief/Planning Time |
| 10:00 | Cabin Meeting |
| 10:30 | Lights Out |
Based on the principles of democratic education, all of the leadership courses at the Ontario Educational Leadership Centre enable youth to discover their full potential while developing skills to work towards a vision of a more just and vital school and community.
Each OELC course will:
- Engage and educate youth so that they can return to their schools and communities ready to make a positive difference;
- Maximize the potential of emerging leaders towards becoming responsible and participating citizens in their schools and beyond;
- Provide youth with the opportunity to develop connections with other young community leaders across Ontario;
- Create safe learning environments where the disposition and skills to dialogue across difference can be nurtured, where diversity is welcomed, conflict is accepted and negotiated, and critical questions are encouraged;
- Allow participants to gain new insights, examine learned behaviours, challenge biases and become empowered agents of change;
- Design opportunities for young people to imagine and create other possibilities for themselves and their world based on democratic principles of social justice and equity.
Part of the vision of the Ontario Educational Leadership Centre is reflected in the words of philosopher Maxine Greene:
We need spaces...for expression, for freedom...a public space...where living persons can come together in speech and action, each one free to articulate a distinctive perspective, all of them granted equal worth. It must be a space of dialogue, a space where a web of relationships can be woven, and where a common world can be brought into being and continually renewed (1984).