TLIM: A Crockpot

As I am sitting, at the back of the College Street Elementary library on a Tuesday night at 7:30 PM watching three of our teacher leaders facilitate a session with parents on the 7 Habits of Highly Successful Families, I flash back to a moment almost exactly 2 years ago. On an October day, I sat in my office with our new principal, Susan Heintzman, and a few of our teacher leaders with a Leader in Me Sales Rep. He said a lot during that meeting to try to “sell” The Leader in Me program to us. He knew that he was speaking to administrators and teachers from a campus with a high number of office referrals, a high absenteeism rate, and struggling scores on the state assessments. Oh boy, what we wouldn’t give for a “magical” program to come fix all of our problems… While I don’t remember most of what he said, there was one thing that did stick with me. The rep shared the data-based results that Leader in Me schools had experienced in relation to behavior, attendance, and academics; but he also cautioned us that The Leader in Me was not a “microwave”, but rather, “a crockpot.” The Leader in Me, he said, takes time and if done “low and slow”, will have a wonderful result.

At that time, what I took away from the “Crockpot” analogy was that we were NOT to expect results overnight. Those who know me well know that being patient and waiting for results does not come easily to me. In fact, one of my top 5 strengths based on the Strengths Finder is “Activator”, meaning, I see something that needs to be done or a problem that needs to solved and would rather take action than sit around and analyze the decision. It is a good thing that Mrs. Heintzman, our principal, is analytical and thoughtful and is usually able to pull me off of the ledge before I take action too quickly :). Because of this trait of mine, after we “pulled the trigger” and started our LIM journey, I expected that after at least 1 year of TLIM implementation, we would see at some results. I wanted results! And I wanted results BADLY! I was quite disappointed at the beginning of the 1^st 9 weeks last fall to see that our number of office referrals, absence occurrences, and academic data had stayed stagnate. In fact, saying I was quite disappointed was probably an understatement. I had witnessed the hard work and dedication of our staff and students and wanted SO badly to have seen that “it worked” to solve our problems and to share that victory with them. I remember saying to Mrs. Heintzman many times, “What are we missing? What else can we be doing?” and seeing her wait patiently.  We kept working hard and I just kept waiting, and waiting, and waiting to see the results. I finally decided that we were doing everything we could in our power and that I needed to stop watching the “crockpot” timer and just keeping working.

This evening, the timer went off… Because the 9 weeks is about to end, I pulled data for discipline, attendance, and reading scores. This is what I discovered:

	End of 1st 9 weeks 2014/2015	End of 1st 9 weeks 2015/2016
Discipline # of Occurrences	67	17
Students with 4 or more absences	37	16
iStation Tier 3 (struggling readers)	46%	22%

I sat in the back of the room, almost crying tears of joy (actually, I did a little but no one saw), listening to our teachers and parents dialogue in a conversation about how to lead their families to be more successful. I heard one grandparent thank a teacher and the school for teaching her grandson the habits and for always listening to him and supporting him. I heard parents share the way they have seen their children transform at home. I listened to these small victories in the background while staring at this data. That is when I realized that while the timer hadn’t gone off until I saw this data today, things were slowly cooking and marinating the whole time, I was just focusing on the final product instead of enjoying the cooking process.

I originally thought that the slow-cooker analogy just meant we needed to give it time and not expect results overnight. Now, I have deepened my thinking about why treating school reform like a crock-pot (being proactive and following a plan) is WAY better than the microwave method- Just like using a microwave to cook food may be fast and produce food that is edible, the food has gone rubbery, isn’t full of flavor, and you weren’t able to get anything worthwhile done during the cooking process. A school program put into place quickly then walked away from results in just that, a program without much result other than dull and impactless program.

A crockpot/ slow-cooker, on the other hand, takes time. During the time it is cooking, you can walk away and work on things of high importance. In fact, this cooking method gives you more time since you don’t have to take time to actually cook. When the timer goes off, what you find is tender and flavorful and is meant to be enjoyed around a dinner table with your family. Not only that, but you were able to enjoy the time that the meal was being cook by focusing on things of high importance. This is The Leader in Me. If you put thought into the flavorful ingredients that are placed into the crockpot (pick the right staff and select the right initiatives), stop listening to the “Activator” inside of yourself and instead use the “cooking” time to plan, prioritize, work, and enjoy school initiatives, you will find yourself with a solid, positive, effective, and student-centered school with the results and happiness to show it. It may take more time, but it is worth it!

I showed the above data to one of our teacher leaders this evening during a break and his response was, “I have been seeing this trend in my classroom. Now the question is, what next?” I love that he knew that even though the crockpot timer went off to show the wonderful results of everyone’s hard work, it isn’t the end. What will we cook next? You’ll just have to wait and see!

Our Attendance Victory!

We have quite the victory to share this week to our community! Starting this fall, we've been tracking our daily attendance at CSE, knowing that it is an area that we need to improve upon. According to www.attendanceworks.com, chronic absenteeism is a powerful indicator of  students becoming at-risk. In fact, "chronic absence is associated with a lack of certain social skills, including a child’s ability to pay attention, work independently, adapt to change and persist in tasks. It also reflects a lack of eagerness to learn new things and a lack of engagement in school. Again, the differences are greater for the students who miss more school." 

At first, we were having classes track days where their entire class was present. The goal was that students would encourage each other and synergize to all be present. Classes set goals each 9 weeks for total number of perfect attendance days and then tracked their progress on a campus attendance data wall. Unfortunately, this system just wasn't quite what we needed. At the semester mark, our attendance was hovering just below 95%, meaning that on average, each CSE student had missed at least 5 days of school and were on track to miss at least 10 days by the end of the year, putting our students greatly at risk. This system was not increasing our overall attendance rate and was sometimes unrealistic, especially in the winter months, to expect classes to have perfect attendance when students were ill.

We know that with a growth mindset, we don't fail and then give up. We see see failures as opportunities for growth! In fact, fail can be see as a "First Attempt in Learning." Our Leader in Me Lighthouse team reflected on what was working and what wasn't working and looked at pictures that we gathered at the symposium in January of attendance tracking systems from other schools. We realized that we needed a more quantitative school-wide goal and for classes to daily track where they were in relation to that goal. We also realized that we needed different incentives to reach this goal. In the end, we decided set our new goal to at least have 96% daily average attendance. We created a large calendar in our hallway and each day we met the goal, a green sticker was placed with our average and on days we did not meet the goal, a red sticker was placed with our average. Classes also received class calendars to do the same with. It was announced that each week, any student who was present all 5 days would get $5 in Cougar Cash and that if we met our goal for the month, we would have a school-wide dance party.

We began tracking with this new system on March 1st and by the end of March, our average daily attendance for the month was SO close to 96%, but not quite there. We pushed forward and continued to remind students about the possible incentive. Yesterday, we were able to celebrate that our average daily attendance for April was 96.5%! Not only did we meet our goal, but we exceeded it. Look at all of the green on that calendar! This shows that when we begin with the end in mind and make a plan to put first things first, we can achieve anything!

As promised, we were able to celebrate as a school community yesterday with our "Synergy Assembly." Our entire school sang the CSE Cougar Song, said our 7 Habits Pledge together, and had a massive line-dancing dance party. Who knew so many of our Cougars have such awesome moves! Check this link out with some highlights from our Synergy Assembly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaX50fpfXWM

We know that if we all continue to encourage each other's attendance, begin with the end in mind, and stay healthy by sharpening the saw, we will continue to meet our goal and raise our overall daily attendance even more!

Opening Easter Eggs = Leadership

Have you all ever watched an Easter Egg Hunt? A whistle blows (or a gun fires if you are REALLY in Texas) and all of a sudden children throw themselves forward to pick up eggs. Eggs.... Plastic round eggs... Filled with goodness knows what! How random!? Here is the best part: They don't pick up one egg, open it, check out its content and decide if it's worthy, then move on to another. They pick up egg, after egg, after egg, after egg, without EVER stopping. They do this ASSUMING that whatever is inside of each egg is wonderful and scrumptious and worth their efforts. They trust this and run with reckless abandon toward each plastic egg.

Children 1) Assume the best in each egg 2) Don't stop to examine 3) Gather eggs with excitement and 4) Take pleasure in the hunt. What would happen if we took a lesson from children at Easter Egg Hunts? With our Leader in Me journey, this is what we have done so far. We have thrown ourselves toward this paradigm shift with reckless abandon and assumed that every egg we open will have wonderful, sweet, and triumphant goodies inside and we have thoroughly enjoyed the hunt so far.

Many adults stop to examine the "eggs" in front of them, wondering, "Is it cracked?", "Could it have gone sour?", "What if it was ruined from the beginning?", "What if the insides melted?" We haven't stopped to examine the eggs, rather, we have seen each egg as a fresh one, ready to be gathered and opened up to wonderful beginnings, just like young children see each egg at an Easter Egg Hunt.

This paradigm shift has paid off. Not only have we "opened up eggs" after the hunt to discover wonderful leaders that we never imagined could be there, but we have done so with reckless abandon and sometimes have even forgotten to stop and catch our breath during the hunt. Random fact- We have given out almost 200 Super Cougar Leadership awards in less than 5 months! We did not realize this until we stopped to "catch our breath" during the "hunt" recently. But still, there are many "eggs" left unopened. At many times, Mrs. Heintzman and I have stopped and looked at each other and asked, "Should we really be recognized for this right now? We have gone so far, but still have so far to go!" The latest achievement, of many of this year, that our school has received is to be the elementary school winner of the district "Model Character" award. Yes, our school is an exemplary example of modeling strong character, but it is so much more than that. This is something that can't be put into words, but only felt but those a part of our school community.

As I watch my sons hunt for Easter eggs tomorrow, I be thinking of what they are imagining, how they are SURE there is "good" stuff inside, and how excited they will be to open up their eggs (even if there are Goldfish inside ;). I will remind myself that we need to take our children as a model when searching for leadership in our own youth, the very youth that can barely sleep tonight in anticipation of the Easter Bunny. As educators, we should live with that same anticipation each day and know that every single child is filled with something wonderful. After all, who wouldn't love opening up an egg filled with some wonderful and scrumptious sweet stuff??

What is leadership?

This is a quote that was introduced to our staff this summer at our 7 habits signature training and at the Texas LIM symposium this week, we saw it again. This time, it really hit home. Many think leadership is about knowing their own self worth and potential and in fact, this is something we believe at College Street. We want our students to know their strengths and talents and be proud of who they are. What this quote reminds us is that this is the result of leadership, not leadership itself. 

I think one of our 4th grade speech students, Kaylee, explained it best when answering the stem, The leader in me is... She said "The leader in me is helping others find the leader in themselves." Wow! This is a student who has only experienced 5 months of TLIM paradigm shift. This is a student who must have personally experienced a teacher's leadership because she is the result. Because of her experiences, she now wants to be a leader and help others find their worth and potential. 

Stories were shared at the Symposium about people who faced some major challenges in their lives and how they overcame them. All it took was an adult's unconditional love, telling them over and over again that they believed in them and would NOT let them give up. These people did not even feel worthy of that kind of love, but over time, they started to see in themselves what the adults communicated to them. This is Covey's quote lived out in real life. There was an elementary school child who talked about his family dealing with and overcoming his mother's battle with breast cancer. He said he got through it by living the 7 habits with his family. There was the story of an ESPN producer who took 2 high school wrestlers under her wing, one who was legally blind and the other who, at 11, had his legs ran over by a train. Both of these boys did not see any worth inside of themselves and did not believe they could be someone special. All it took was one person who consistently showed love and communicated their worth and potential over and over and over again, until they saw it in themselves and reached their dreams. There was Tommy Spaulding who was told by everyone in his life that he would never amount to much and whose football coach told him, "I believe in you", and his life was changed. There was another child who at the age of about 9, had already developed a mantra for life, "Yes, I can." Anytime he has been faced with a challenge, he simply tells himself, "Yes, I can." He learned how to face challenges and believe in himself through the leadership of his teachers at his school communicating his worth and potential to him. 

When people ask, "What exactly is the leader in me?", the easiest way to respond is that we believe that all students can be leaders and we teach students to follow the 7 habits to be leaders in their own and others' lives. But this response doesn't do TLIM justice. TLIM isn 't just teaching the 7 habits, helping students set goals and make a plan to reach them, or assigning student leadership roles. It is so much more. It is a true paradigm shift that starts with the educators in our students' lives. It is a ripple effect. It is going into relationships full of love. It is, as Kaylee would say, "Helping others find the leader in themselves."

Who do you know that has lived out Covey's quote above and communicated someone's worth and potential so much that they have started to see it in themselves? Who changed your life simply by believing in you and telling you the things they saw in you that you never saw yourself? Now is the time to let those people know. Would you please comment below and tell us who you have seen live this out? Otherwise, they may never know...