Beyond the Classroom: Rethinking Student Leadership Through Authentic Experiences
- Carrie Wihbey
- Apr 7
- 7 min read
Updated: 55 minutes ago
By Carrie Wihbey and Kateshia McAfee
Adolescents have the power to transform communities—if we let them. Too often, though, students experience learning as passive consumers of information instead of active leaders. According to a recent study by the Brookings Institution, only 36% of middle and high school students agree or strongly agree: “At my school, I get to develop my own ideas.”
What if more students were given authentic opportunities to engage with their communities, explore meaningful careers, and take ownership of their futures? What if we could help shift their mindsets from passive to active, while also embedding their energy, ideas, and leadership into the fabric of our communities?
One powerful way to reimagine this shift is through Rebecca Winthrop’s framework from The Disengaged Teen, which categorizes student experiences by their level of engagement and agency:
Resisters – Actively disengaged students who feel invisible or see school as irrelevant.
Passengers – Students who go through the motions, completing tasks without real investment.
Achievers – High-performing students who engage out of obligation or external validation but may not find real meaning in their learning.
Explorers – Students who are deeply engaged, finding intrinsic motivation and personal relevance in their education.
Students can sometimes shift among these modes across time or even over the course of a single day. The problem? Traditional schooling pushes most students into the first three categories.
At best, students are lured into following along, getting good grades but oftentimes never truly connecting with their learning. At worst, many students throw up their hands, asking, “What does this have to do with my life?” and disengaging completely.
If we want more Explorers—students who find real meaning and agency in their education—we must move beyond a system that rewards compliance over curiosity. Even our most accomplished students can feel lost when their learning lacks purpose. The real question is: what would school look like if it helped students lead lives that actually matter to them?
The Need for Purpose in Student Leadership
We recently spoke with Erin Hickey, a Northeastern University student in her early 20s who works closely with teens in Boston through local youth programs. We met Erin during our research on supporting out-of-school-time spaces, and her reflections on the mental health crisis among young people stayed with us.
She described how students today are constantly exposed to information—global issues, local challenges, and social injustices—right at their fingertips, but have few meaningful avenues to take action. In her words, young people often don’t know what they might be doing in 8 to 12 years to actually contribute to the world they see on their phones.
Erin also shared a powerful insight about how students who struggle in school often internalize the belief that they’ll struggle in the workforce, too. They don’t realize how different the demands of school and the working world can be—and how school performance doesn’t define their potential. In her view, students need experiences that demonstrate their intelligence and capability in different contexts, helping them see themselves as skilled and impactful contributors.
Education Needs a Moment of Flight
Education is in need of reinvention. Thomas Arnett, from the Clayton Christensen Institute, draws a powerful comparison to what he calls a "flight moment"—a point in history when trains, despite all their refinements, could no longer meet the demands of transportation. The invention of the airplane changed everything. According to Arnett, education is now at a similar crossroads. He notes that we’ve been refining the system for decades. But at a certain point, we don’t need a faster train—we need flight.
Arnett points to current data to underscore the urgency. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores are declining.
Given the NAEP data, we can see that traditional approaches to education are beginning to fail our students. In 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, developmental psychologist David Yeager highlights how top-down, authority-driven messaging often fails adolescents. For example, he contrasts the "Just Say No" campaign—focused on warning students about drugs—with the "Truth" campaign, which successfully reduced teen smoking by exposing the manipulative tactics of tobacco companies.
The difference? Agency. The "Truth" campaign framed non-smoking as an act of rebellion against corporate deception, aligning with adolescents’ need for autonomy and status. When students feel like active participants in change, they engage.
This applies to leadership, too. If we want students to develop real leadership skills, we move beyond giving them symbolic roles and place them in environments where their decisions and actions actually matter.
Recently, we had the opportunity to visit two out-of-school time programs that show significant shifts in student engagement; we also experimented with a program of our own.
HMS MEDscience at Harvard Medical School: A Model for Authentic Student Leadership
A few weeks ago, we visited the HMS MEDscience program at Harvard Medical School, an initiative that exemplifies what real student engagement should look like.
This program doesn’t just teach medical concepts—it immerses students in hands-on, high-stakes scenarios. In our hour-and-a-half visit, we saw firsthand how real-world challenges spark leadership, collaboration, and deep learning.
How the Experience Unfolds:
Students arrive in scrubs, ready to step into a real-world medical environment.
An interactive session introduces lung physiology, but it’s not just passive learning—the facilitators engage students with questions, prompting curiosity and participation.
They’re prepped for a case study: A whiteboard outlines key patient data categories—age, symptoms, medical history, prescriptions, vitals—all the details a real doctor would track.
Then the shift happens. “It looks like we have a patient incoming,” a facilitator says, leaving the room. Students jump to their feet. Their energy shifts. A high-fidelity manikin "patient" arrives, speaking with symptoms—operated by facilitators behind a double-sided mirror. The students must assess, diagnose, and treat her in real-time.
They check her oxygen levels, heart rate, and blood pressure.
They document symptoms and rule out possibilities.
They collaborate, debating diagnoses and treatment plans.
At first, they miss the correct diagnosis. They think it’s the flu. It’s not.
But they persist. Finally, they identify asthma induced by environmental factors (a run through a construction zone). They treat the patient with oxygen and an inhaler—successfully saving her.
No, they weren’t treating real patients—but the urgency was real. And so was the collaboration, the critical thinking, and the leadership it required.
BUILD Boston: How Entrepreneurship Unlocks Student Leadership
Just like the Med Science program brings medicine to life, BUILD Boston immerses students in the world of entrepreneurship—where leadership is forged through risk-taking, resilience, and innovation. We recently visited a BUILD classroom where this semester-long entrepreneurial journey has just begun.
At Charlestown High School, a group of first-year students stand before their peers, ready to pitch—not a business idea, but themselves. Each student has crafted a personal logo, identified core values, and sketched out the beginnings of a venture that reflects their interests and ambitions. This isn’t a hypothetical exercise; it is step one of students embracing the mindset and skills of an entrepreneur. Next up, students will pair up and begin their first cycle through the design process of creating their first product.
Over the next few months, students will form teams, prototype solutions to real-world problems, and prepare to present their ventures to industry professionals. It’s more than a class—it’s an opportunity to take risks, adapt, and lead. Starting in early May, more than 40 student teams will put their ideas to the test, pitching their businesses to volunteer judges in hopes of securing a spot at The BUILDFest Pitch Competition.
The BUILD program is currently embedded in eight high schools across Greater Boston as well as a community-based organization, where students don’t just learn about business—they step into it. Guided by an educator who is trained in the BUILD curriculum that blends design thinking, collaboration, and real-world problem-solving, students work through the entire startup process, from idea generation to product development and final pitches. Additionally, each week, volunteer business coaches join the classroom, offering mentorship and challenging students to collaborate, make decisions, and persevere.
Programs like BUILD Boston prove that when students are given authentic leadership opportunities—ones where their decisions and ideas hold weight—they rise to the challenge. We look forward to witnessing the growth these students will undoubtedly experience between now and then!
What If Learning Looked More Purposeful?
Imagine if students had more opportunities to lead in meaningful ways.
Our organization, WPS Institute, recently experimented with a program called the Innovation Everywhere Internship (video here) where 50 students from schools across Greater Boston developed their own ideas, built teams, received microgrants, and launched community impact projects – for example, an upcycling club, a teen networking series, and a STEM program for elementary students built around activities like ice cream and slime. We measured the impact using Transcend’s LEAPS survey (the same survey used by Rebecca Winthrop at Brookings). The results were striking.
Only 39% of students said they loved school. But 89% said they loved the internship.
Only 46% of students felt that adults respected their ideas in school, but in the internship, that jumped to 97%—aligning with David Yeager’s research on the power of autonomy and respect.
87% of students reported using critical thinking skills in the internship, vs. 37% in school.
89% in the internship said, “I feel like I’m learning a lot,” compared to 55% in school.
These numbers tell a clear story: when students take ownership of real-world projects, their engagement, confidence, and sense of agency skyrocket.
As emerging technologies like AI continue to evolve, we have even more tools to design learning experiences that are personalized, purpose-driven, and led by students themselves. Education scholar Yong Zhao emphasizes that personalization shouldn’t be something done to students, but something done by students—helping them discover their strengths and pursue what matters to them most. (Read more.)
If we want to create the next generation of problem solvers, innovators, and leaders, we need to give them something real to lead. That means designing learning experiences where students aren’t just rehearsing for the future—they’re shaping it. It means trusting students with real decisions, real challenges, and real purpose.
Programs like HMS Medscience, BUILD Boston, and the Innovation Everywhere Internship show us what’s possible. They are proof points—but they shouldn't be the outlier.
It’s time for education to take flight. Authentic learning shouldn’t be the exception – it should be the standard for how students learn to lead.
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