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April 29, 2025
Explore how to teach students the power of evaluating leadership beyond partisan lines with a new lesson plan that encourages critical thinking, civic engagement, and personal reflection—perfect for assessing today's leaders or those of the past.
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As I reflect on the first 100 days of President Trump's second term, I'm reminded of a lesson I used to teach when I worked with Close Up.
(Close Up is a nonpartisan civic education program that brings students from across the country to Washington, D.C., to explore democracy in action and learn how to engage meaningfully with public policy and leadership.)
One of my favorite activities with students was asking them to define what makes a good leader — whether that’s the president, a member of Congress, a governor or a local official. We’d start simple: brainstorming together on a flip chart all the traits students believed were important when selecting a leader. Traits such as honesty, courage, vision, accountability and empathy were frequently mentioned. We worked hard to move beyond political parties, focusing instead on leadership qualities themselves. No leader is perfect, and often there are traits we admire and traits we question across the political spectrum.
Once we had a big list of leadership qualities, students would work in small groups to narrow down their top five. Then they built a rubric, carefully defining what it would mean to “exceed expectations,” “meet expectations,” “need improvement" or “fall short” in each category. It gave students a framework for evaluating leaders based on their values, not just partisan loyalty.
Help students think critically about leadership with this customizable civics lesson. Students identify key traits, build their own evaluation rubric, research a leader, and complete a report card based on their findings.
We also had students identify political topics that mattered most to them personally — things like education, climate change, healthcare, public safety, voting rights or the economy.
And just like they did with leadership qualities, students created scoring criteria for those issues.
For example:
Rather than debating which view was correct, students focused on building rubrics that reflected their own priorities, defining what a leader’s success or failure looked like on the issues that mattered most to them.
This gave every student ownership of the evaluation process and made the project more real-world, nuanced and personal.
In the end, students' rubrics became two-dimensional:
In a healthy democracy, citizens aren't passive observers. We question, we evaluate, and we hold our leaders accountable based on the values and priorities we believe in.
Fast forward to today, and this approach feels more relevant than ever. Whether we’re evaluating President Trump’s first 100 days of his second term or thinking about local leaders shaping our communities, the same questions matter:
To help students, teachers and community members participate in this kind of evaluation, I created a new lesson plan and accompanying resources.
This includes:
Whether you want to use this activity to reflect on today’s national leaders, past presidents, or even local officials, it’s designed to give students a structured, nonpartisan way to think critically about leadership.
You can find the full lesson plan and free resources on Share My Lesson.
Leadership matters — and so does the way we think about it.
Because at its core, this exercise isn't just about grading leaders. It's about practicing democracy.
In a healthy democracy, citizens aren't passive observers. We question, we evaluate, and we hold our leaders accountable based on the values and priorities we believe in. When students build their own rubrics, define their own issues and critically assess leadership, they’re building the habits of engaged, informed citizens — the very habits that democracy depends on.
Whether you're evaluating today's national leaders or reflecting on the past, these skills — critical thinking, honest evaluation and civic responsibility — are what sustain a thriving democracy.
This collection empowers students to explore the core principles that make democracy work, with resources that bring democratic ideas to life in ways that feel relevant and engaging.
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