It's Not a Program

Wednesday we had the third phase of our Leader in Me training. We started talking about the next steps in our school journey, aligning the seven habits with academics. To begin the training we were asked the following question:

Why are you implementing Leader in Me?

My first answer for this question was, "to improve the behavior of the students in our building and reduce discipline issues." As I sat there and thought a little longer, I realized that, one - I really didn't know why we initially decided to implement Leader in Me, and two - if that was the actual reason for our implementation, Leader in Me would just be one more program that could easily be replaced with the next new thing.  

In that moment, I had one of those paradigm shifts our trainers and our coach have talked about. 

I shifted my paradigm from thinking that Leader in Me was a bandaid we put on behavior problems to thinking that it's tools we are giving our students and ourselves to be more successful in every aspect of our lives. Erin, our amazing school librarian, brought up the idea that our district's vision is to help students become life-ready, but as a 4th - 6th grade school we rarely see the fruits of our labor. We rarely get to see what our students have become at the end of this journey. 

The language we use and the actions we model are giving our students the tools they need for their futures. Despite all of our hard work, it may not be until 5, 10 or even 15 years down the road that these ideas and tools will really click for our kids and help them make better choices and lead successful lives. 

We need to shift our paradigm and realize that these seven habits aren't a "pill to make the headache go away." By seeing these seven habits as a foundation for the choices we make and by modeling these seven habits for our kids, we will be able to be the role models that our students need to begin using the tools in their own lives and work towards becoming life-ready adults.