The Oak Grove School Staff is reading a book written by Stephen Covey entitled
The Leader in Me. The book describes a elementary school in Raleigh, North Carolina where the staff began teaching the Covey
7 Habits of Highly Effective People to all of their students. (These habits have been taught in businesses for many years. ) For example while learning "Habit 1 - Be Proactive", the children learned that they were in charge of themselves. When something difficult happened to them, the children had an opportunity to respond in a reactive manner with anger or proactively choose a positive action. As they learned "Habit 2 - Begin With the End in Mind" the children set academic goals and graphed their progress in data notebooks. Over time, each student was given a leadership job in the school. The school found that learning increased and behavior improved. Parents learned the habits as well using the
7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. Educators from around the world came to visit the school and the children greeted the visitors displaying their leadership skills of eye contact, shaking hands and public speaking. The visitors took the Leader in Me philosophy back to their own schools and found similar results. At Oak Grove School we believe that this could be an amazing program for all of our children. Empowering students to lead themselves and work with others is an essential Life and Career Skill for 21st Century Learning that we have identified as part of the Oak Grove Strategic Plan approved by the Board of Education. Please let me know if you are intrigued with this concept. To learn more you might want to read one of the books listed here or go to
www.theleaderinme.org. I am also logging our learning on another blog I created
http://ogsleaderinme.blogspot.com/
Janice
ReplyDeleteWhere is the strategic plan that includes the leader in me program that was approved by the BOE?
Anne Rebmann
Anne:
ReplyDeleteOur Oak Grove Strategic Plan promotes 21st Century Learning.
The 21st Century Learning Action Plan requires us to:
"1.2 b Identify areas and complete research on 21st Century skills and how the skills are implemented in schools."
"1.4 Expand teachers knowledge and awareness of 21st Century skills" This action plan calls for identifying common vocabulary, visiting schools, teachers piloting and sharing their findings
While researching how others implement 21st Century Learning, we found that schools that implement The Leader in Me philosophy find students increase in ownership for their own learning, social relationships improve, confidence is enhanced and school discipline is reduced.
At this point, some of the staff has been learning about Steven Covey's 7 Habits, some teachers have been piloting teaching the habits to the children to determine if this would be a good strategy to help prepare our students for their futures.