Chapters 7 & 8
The Leader In Me
Chapters 7 & 8
Chapter 7: Engaging the Community
- How community members help to expand the impact of The Leader In Me
Chapter 8: Shifting to Secondary and Beyond
- Focuses on how to adapt the program for secondary schools
Questions:
1. According to several sponsoring agencies, which voids does The Leader In Me address?
2. What are the biggest challenges in taking The Leader In Me to the middle and high schools?
Many students have not acquired the "secret code" of society; those unwritten rules that successful people know. If they don't learn them at home, chances are they never will, unless we teach them in school. The 7 Habits teaches students those societal expectations such as how to get along with others, being on time for work, and how to plan ahead. For some adults, the 7 Habits teaches them people skills they never learned and when that happens, they find that they are happier and more confident.
ReplyDeleteThe whole first part of the book was focused on implementing the 7 Habits in elementary schools. One of the challenges for middle and high school is that students change classes rather than stay with one teacher for most of the day. It would not work for all teachers to teach the 7 Habits everyday. Students would get sick of it very quickly. It has to be taught purposefully, like in Foxes Den, but also modeled everywhere by everyone and messages supporting the 7 Habits should be visible everywhere in the building.
As Leslie stated, not all students acquire the unwritten rules of successful people. I feel in the past that these were skills taught at home through modeling, experience, and face to face interactions with others. I know I learned from advice my mom gave me as well as taking on summer jobs as soon as I was old enough. I also participated in many after school activities that helped me practice interacting with others and working as a team. Unfortunately, not all students today are getting these experiences that help them learn needed life skills.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the biggest challenges we would have in implementing the 7 Habits in middle school is that we only have our students for two years (hopefully three soon!). But, I don't think that doesn't mean that we couldn't make an impact in that short time. Students do see many teachers each day, and all teachers could use and model the language of the 7 Habits and incorporate the habits into their lessons frequently. We could even assign a habit to each subject area to teach.
I like the idea of all students creating their own personal mission statements. This could be a writing assignment in English class. I also liked the idea of students having their own "legacy" folders. I know as a parent I save the best work that comes home for my own children. They have a folder for each grade of school, and they enjoy looking back at their past work and successes. Students at the middle school could each have a folder to save their best papers, art work, test score, etc. It could be a great self-esteem builder for some.
I love the idea of mission statements - for their future, for the school year and even narrowing it down for their own successes in that particular class. I think it would be great to have students have their first page in a folder/binder be their mission so every time they open it up they read it.
DeleteSome challenges that secondary schools run into is schedules in general. As states in previous comments, students would get really tired of hearing the same talk about the subject from every single period teacher they see in a day. I felt like this happened already last year with our beginning of the year powerpoints about rules and expectations. My 3rd period class was already tuning me out because they'd just sat through two other periods listening to the same old rules.
ReplyDeleteThe leadership roles in a secondary school would need to be on the level of the students. This would make the roles a much bigger responsibility and roles that students can feel like they belong. I remember in my middle school we had peer mediation. If there were conflicts happening between students (minor conflicts) you would be sent to peer mediation. Any student wishing to be a peer mediator had to go through training to know how to handle dealing with other student's conflicts. It was a huge responsibility because the subject was confidential and you had to stay neutral and really "hear" what the students in conflict were talking about. With that said, the roles would need to be "bigger" and more in depth than an elementary school role.
The void the leader in me addresses are (sadly) things that aren't being covered at home in many households these days. I have been thinking of countless ways to teach the habits within my classroom without it being a real lesson. I feel like at the middle school age students are still willing to learn and be understanding of others. Even though we only have the students for two years, I think that with everyone working together to slowly immerse these habits in a non lesson type of way, the kids will slowly learn how to handle life's challenges with a little more finesse. I respected the use of the Friday Harbor Videos but from student talk - not everyone participated in a discussion and some students tuned it out. I think the student videos were WAY more beneficial than the professional videos. However, I feel that the 7 habits needs to be carefully taught within the school day without the students knowing they are actually learning something. Then - when they have an assembly that touches on the topics carefully dropped in classrooms they can make a better connection with it.