Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Stacie Finley--Ch. 3;Joyce Fleisher--Ch. 4



Leader in Me: Chapter 3- Crafting a Blueprint for Leadership
By: Stacie Finley

What exactly is leadership? A. B. Combs and his team decided that leadership should be a vision statement that students and staff could relate to. It was built around the four needs- To Live, to Love, to Learn, to Leave a Legacy
We Live by striving to be the best as we can be
We Love by caring for others
We Learn by working hard in school
We Leave a Legacy by sharing our school with others and making a difference in the world


A.B. Combs decided that the 7 habits are organized into a sequential progressive model:
Habits 1-3: be proactive, begin with and end in mind and put things first.
Habits 4-6: Think win-win (balancing courage with consideration of others), seek first to understand, then to be understood, and synergize.
Habit7: Sharpen the saw- physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual

A Ubiquitous Strategy
Ubiquitous approach means that it is built into everything the school does. This approach has proved to be conductive to higher learning, greater satisfaction, and reduced discipline issues. Even though some principals are introduced during stand-alone modules, far more often they are woven into a variety of subjects and class activities. By using this approach, students are taught principals of leadership from day one.

Data Notebooks
A.B. Combs and a number of other schools will give each student a three-ring binder. Students will record their personal and academic goals to chart their progress throughout the year. Students also use the notebooks to lead student-parent- teacher conferences to review goals and progress. Students are very proud and take ownership of their data notebooks.



The Leader in Me-Blog.
Joyce Fleisher
Chpt. 4 Aligning for Success pg. 71-89
p.72- Problem:  Having a mission statement and everyone going in many different directions.  Some teachers had pet projects which were not aligned to the mission statement. There was a lack of clarity regarding the direction on the school as a whole.

P.73 - The author said they needed 4 areas to align.
1. Bring all people on board with new theme.
2. Aligning the school structure to match strategy.
3. Train the staff in the 7 Habits principals.
4. Aligning the reward system so outcomes would be reinforced.
Getting people trained:  P 80
·         Teachers agreed to start with teaching the children to do the “right thing” rather than all the focus on the test. If the children did the right thing…the test scores would follow.  
·         They wanted all faculty/staff on board. They didn’t want Any Teacher Left Behind!  They started with 1 class on a grade level to implement new leadership themes the first year.
·         As those classes had better scores and less discipline problems the other teachers wanted to try too. They said “Every student deserves this.”
·         Then all the campus had common school wide language. Next step was to including the parents in the goals and language.
·         Everyone had leader attached to their title. A change in Philosophy.
The leader of student counseling. Leader of media, leader of art, leader of music, leader of physical education, special project leaders.
Students had leader of mail, leader of special events, leader of recycle team, leader of safety patrol, grounds crew, PE helper, library leader (pg. 77)
·         Code of conduct was replaced by student code of cooperation J


Aligning who will do what. P 75
A student leader suggested they change the acronym from MAGIC to LEAD.  (MAGIC was model, accept responsibility, give respect, improve , cooperate. The student said it is not MAGIC…it is hard work…so LEAD is Loyalty, excellence, achievement and discipline. )They changed the signs around the school to LEAD because 1 of their student leaders suggested it.

Next step was training and resources.  They trained all staff…not just teachers…so all would be on the same page with the same 7 Habits language. (Leader in Me website for lessons.)
The teachers/ staff modeled the 7 habits 2; the students practiced the leadership principals. …from K-5th  The teachers and students used the 7 habits in their homes too.
Reward creativity and hard work. Rubric they used the 1,2,3,4 rubric.
 Relating to Ordering a Hamburger.   P.84)
Level  -1  -waited awhile, and not getting what was requested… + greasy fries
Level - 2 - hamburger on time, mildly warm, missing cheese/ pickles expected.
Level 3 -hot of grill hamburger, got everything expected…no extras!
Level 4  -hamburger is perfect, + extra hot fries and shake for free !  Clearly more than expected!

Rewards: Class awards, morning news recognition, award ceremonies.  Rewards were from 4 basic needs. Physical, social-emotional, mental and spiritual.
Author says “Don’t overlook:”   --- reward system has 2 sides. . 1. Reinforcing good behavior       2. Discipline of unacceptable behavior.
In conclusion- They didn’t say “Go Forth and have fun.” They:
Got people on board, alignment structure, philosophy of empowerment, training reward system to support and sustain efforts.

Sharpen the Saw: Later the schools continue to align, realign and realign again as they progressed.  

1 comment:

  1. Chapter 3 is a great blueprint for THE LEADER IN ME plan. Chapter 4 gave more details to carrying out the plan. It is great to be able to see how the plan was actually carried out in a school system.

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