Roskam talks leadership with West Chicago fifth-graders
Congressman Peter Roskam shared some tips on leadership Wednesday with youngsters at Indian Knoll Elementary School in West Chicago.
In a classroom filled with books and drawings, Roskam spoke to roughly 20 students who do service projects as part of a leadership team.
"You're the fifth-grade leadership group," the Wheaton Republican said. "That means you're the group I'm going to be counting on in the future to lead when I'm an old man. Can I count on you to do that for me?"
Roskam's short presentation centered on three themes: opportunity, initiative and leadership.
He first told students the United States is a country that does not place limitations on what people can become.
"We live in a country where we routinely think to ourselves and we tell our friends and we tell our children and we ask our family, we say, 'What do you want to do in the future? What do you want to be when you grow up?'" Roskam said. "And there's no limitation about what it is that you can do or you can be. That's a remarkable thing."
His next lesson to the budding leaders? They can initiate things and come up with ideas to make their surroundings a better place.
"And that's why, when I was invited to come and be with you today, I said 'I absolutely want to be with you today,'" Roskam said. "Because it's out of this idea right now that somebody in this classroom ... at some point ... is going to have an idea. And you can run with the idea and the idea can make things better for people.
"That is such a great gift to be able to think that we live in a country where that's who we are and that's what we do."
Roskam's final message to the students was that being a leader is not a one-person show.
"Part of leadership is recognizing that it's hard to do things alone," he said. "The best things, by and large, are things that we do with other people and we try and find out what they're good at, help them to do what they're good at and then get out of the way as they're doing it."
The kids also got the chance to ask questions. They asked Roskam about his most and least favorite parts of his job, whether he had ever been in the Oval Office and how he got interested in politics.
Roskam said he hopes the kids start thinking about taking the initiative.
"That's really what I was trying to communicate, that they don't have to just sit back, they can take the initiative and try and improve things and try and find out how they can work collaboratively with others."