Our Journey to Becoming a Leader in Me School
It only takes one spark to ignite a fire, and that is exactly what happened here at Beaumont. One of our fourth grade teachers, Heather Nuckolls, participated in the Galileo Leadership Consortium and was introduced to Stephen Covey's book, The Leader in Me. She began to implement the 7 habits with her students in her classroom. She immediately felt a positive impact on the learning and social environment and brought it to my attention. We both saw this work to be the answer to who we are at Beaumont and who we desire to become. We decided to enlist staff members in this work and found that they were just as excited as we were and fully supported our goals. We began by visiting another building in the process of becoming a Leader in Me school, and by devoting staff development time to research, talk and and begin some future planning for our own school. As a staff, we had 100% committment to move forward in becoming a Leader in Me school. We came in the summer on our own time, to be trained by a Franklin Covey facilitator. Our teachers, support staff and parents showed overwhelming volunteerism this summer by painting, cleaning, reorganizing and redecorating the interior and exterior of our building. We opened our doors prior to the start of the school year for a Meet & Greet with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the Waterford Kettering High School Drum Line playing in the background.
Our work is evidence that school improvement is not the result of one person's vision. In its truest form, our school improvement efforts have shown the power of teacher leadership and administration having a shared purpose and vision. Beaumont's becoming a Leader in Me school is the collective responsibility and continuing endeavor of an entire staff who is committed to personal change, professional growth, and motivating students and their families toward a better, brighter future where everyone can demonstrate their unique leadership skills!
Jan McCartan, Principal
Our work is evidence that school improvement is not the result of one person's vision. In its truest form, our school improvement efforts have shown the power of teacher leadership and administration having a shared purpose and vision. Beaumont's becoming a Leader in Me school is the collective responsibility and continuing endeavor of an entire staff who is committed to personal change, professional growth, and motivating students and their families toward a better, brighter future where everyone can demonstrate their unique leadership skills!
Jan McCartan, Principal
Our Journey Continues...
During the summer of 2011, 17 staff members attended the Leader In Me Global Education Summit at California University in Pennsylvania. Beaumont was featured in a video at the opening of the summit. Sean Covey had our staff members stand and be recognized for the great things that are happening at our school. Several staff members were also invited to lead presentations. Some of the things we learned about were best practices of lighthouse teams, inspiring leadership environments, principle-centered leadership, measuring success, the High Trust Classroom, engaging parents in the Leader in Me mission and empowering students.
What does proactive mean?
"It means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate our feelings to values. We have the initiative and the responsibility to make things happen."
--Stephen Covey
