Student Leadership Institute: Why It’s Wild and Worth It
by Jen Woods, Upper School Principal
This story originally appeared in the 2026 Whitefield Magazine.
As Christian educators, we understand that we’re responsible to focus on the whole child. Our classrooms and programming extend beyond sharpening our students’ minds to focus on cultivating their hearts and affections.
Providing students with authentic opportunities to grow as winsome leaders allows them to understand their role in building community. Student leadership can be messy and wild because they often learn through mistakes. However, providing space for them to work through these growing pains is essential.
This year, Whitefield’s Student Leadership Institute (SLI) turned seven years old. I also completed my seventh year as Upper School Principal. Watching the 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 the SLI, students looking for opportunities to lead had limited options. Plus, 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 ten minutes. They simply didn’t have time or support to effectively prepare. Whitefield didn’t lack eager students or invested faculty. We just needed the vision and resources to pour into students in this way.
God’s timing is awesome! As we identified student leadership as an area of growth, Mike Shaheen joined our team as the Director of Student Leadership. Mike immediately brought vision, passion, and experience in student leadership to Whitefield when it was deeply needed.
Years later, we have 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. It gives students space to truly design, prepare, serve, and lead.
Leadership isn’t glamorous. Christ is our example. He 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 says “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.” I’m thankful that our students’ early experiences in journeying through the costs of leadership come in 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.
Whitefield’s 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).
In her book Never Enough, Jennifer Breheny Wallace describes how students “absorb 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.
Whitefield Academy’s Student Leadership Institute is an avenue for our students to grow into leaders who understand their purpose. In this way, we can ensure our students understand that godly leadership is about serving others and sacrifice, not about achievement and self-promotion.
