Leader in Me
Hodges Elementary Greenwood School of Inquiry is a Leader in Me School. What is Leader in Me? Leader in Me is a school-wide process that empowers students to find and utilize their leadership potential to positively impact their education. community, and world. This process is powered by five core paradigms: leadership, potential, change, motivation, and education. These paradigms unlock unlimited potential in students by showing them that each and every one of them can be leaders, has great potential, and can be world-changers, and are in charge of their own learning. Teachers and parents work together to help students grow socially, emotionally, and academically.
We began our journey toward empowering students by teaching the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Students learn and review these practices during morning meetings, guidance lessons, gatherings, and highlights on our school news show. We established class and school mission statements that are posted outside our classrooms. These mission statements drive our morning meetings and are a guide to how we want to live inside and outside of our classrooms. In an effort to support families, this year we hosted a Leader in Me event where students taught their families the process of creating mission statements. They then worked with their families to create family mission statements to take home and implement the 7 Habits in their homes.
This year students applied for the opportunity to become leaders in our school by serving on our Student Lighthouse Team. Applications were reviewed by the school's action team and two members from each third, fourth, and fifth grade class were selected based on their qualifications. The Student Lighthouse Team met and embarked on their first action change project by helping our the elders in our local community by collecting money and blankets for Snowflakes for Seniors, a nonprofit organization that assists seniors during the holidays. They will meet regularly to discuss the needs of our school and community.
A goal for us this year is to implement WIGs. What are WIGs? WIG stands for wildly important goals. Teachers and students set goals to help grow in their areas of need. Goal setting begins by identifying a gap, be it academic and/or personal. Next, we establish strategies that help to meet that goal. We determine how long it will take us and check in our our growth each month. We use accountability partners to help support us while we are in the process of meeting our goals. When we achieve our goals, we celebrate. If we don't quite meet our goals, we reflect on what worked and what did not to refine and perfect our strategies for success.
Our next step in the process of our Leader in Me journey is to implement Leadership Portfolios. Students and staff will utilize these portfolios to organize their work, celebrations, and success while working on their WIGs. These portfolios will be divided into sections containing personal information about who we are, our current goals, data to show our progress toward attaining our goals, goals we have completed, work in which we are proud, and our celebrations.