March 17th, 2018
21st Century Classroom
MRUSD Looks to Unlock The Leadership Potential of All Students
By Joan Cavallo
Principal St. Albans City School
At a time when student leadership is making news nationwide, the Maple Run Unified School District (MRUSD) is exploring how leadership skills can be cultivated in every student. On Monday March 12th, 45 teachers and administrators from the five schools unified in the MRUSD, worked with consultants Joel Wright and Preston Yarborough from The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) to take the first step forward in this journey. The CCL model for leadership helps us see three ways that students can be supported as leaders; leading self, leading with others and changing their world. Each of these is important, and fully supports our MRUSD commitment to supporting our students in acquiring and demonstrating transferable skills (communication, selfdirection, problem solving, involved citizenship and informed and integrative thinking).
Our first day together was to create a train the trainer model to use the CCL Leadership Essentials. Once our trainers were trained to use three of the essentials, we then practiced and discussed how we would teach these tools to all MRUSD educators. This was in preparation for the MRUSD Inservice event on March 30th. Each year, we plan one day to be a district-wide event, where we are collaborating and learning as a full district. On March 30th, each school will experience the same learning, led by facilitators from their school that were trained this week.
The CCL learning model is experiential, so each skill that we learned was through a creative activity. For one skill we used pictures and metaphoric thinking to describe leadership. Another gave us the opportunity to act out a situation, and the third we explored a tool rarely used in school. It was fun and highly engaging. These are the types of activities we strive to provide for students every day.
The Leadership Essentials that CCL shared are new, but the approach and the use of experiential learning is something that we see in all of our schools every day, and something we want to provide even more. Once the teachers learn these three essentials, we expect that they will use them with students, and see ways to further integrate this type of learning into their classes each day.
At St. Albans City School, this work is consistent with our use of Conscious Discipline, Restorative Practice and our focus on Stewardship. At each of the five schools this will be furthering our school’s current initiatives, as we each strive to support our students’ transferable skills and unlock the leadership potential of all students.
MRUSD Looks to Unlock The Leadership Potential of All Students
By Joan Cavallo
Principal St. Albans City School
At a time when student leadership is making news nationwide, the Maple Run Unified School District (MRUSD) is exploring how leadership skills can be cultivated in every student. On Monday March 12th, 45 teachers and administrators from the five schools unified in the MRUSD, worked with consultants Joel Wright and Preston Yarborough from The Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) to take the first step forward in this journey. The CCL model for leadership helps us see three ways that students can be supported as leaders; leading self, leading with others and changing their world. Each of these is important, and fully supports our MRUSD commitment to supporting our students in acquiring and demonstrating transferable skills (communication, selfdirection, problem solving, involved citizenship and informed and integrative thinking).
Our first day together was to create a train the trainer model to use the CCL Leadership Essentials. Once our trainers were trained to use three of the essentials, we then practiced and discussed how we would teach these tools to all MRUSD educators. This was in preparation for the MRUSD Inservice event on March 30th. Each year, we plan one day to be a district-wide event, where we are collaborating and learning as a full district. On March 30th, each school will experience the same learning, led by facilitators from their school that were trained this week.
The CCL learning model is experiential, so each skill that we learned was through a creative activity. For one skill we used pictures and metaphoric thinking to describe leadership. Another gave us the opportunity to act out a situation, and the third we explored a tool rarely used in school. It was fun and highly engaging. These are the types of activities we strive to provide for students every day.
The Leadership Essentials that CCL shared are new, but the approach and the use of experiential learning is something that we see in all of our schools every day, and something we want to provide even more. Once the teachers learn these three essentials, we expect that they will use them with students, and see ways to further integrate this type of learning into their classes each day.
At St. Albans City School, this work is consistent with our use of Conscious Discipline, Restorative Practice and our focus on Stewardship. At each of the five schools this will be furthering our school’s current initiatives, as we each strive to support our students’ transferable skills and unlock the leadership potential of all students.