Last Friday we embarked on LEAD NOW training. Our first step was to take a look within ourselves. We took time to examine our priorities. We then chose 3 to 5 of those values as our CORE VALUES. Our next step was to turn those core values into ESSENTIAL INTENTION statements. As we continue on our journey to be the best version of ourselves we must not think of our work last Friday as simply an activity to check off our list of things to do, but instead as the beginning (or maybe for some the continuation) of defining our why. I created my list of values several years ago! I work to live up to those values every day. They help me with the CHARACTER piece of LEAD NOW---I know that my character is the experience that you have when you are with me. Sometimes, I fall short of living up to my values, but I will continue to strive to be the person and the leader that I want to be. Have you decided on your value statements? Have you shared them with others! I challenge you to be vulnerable and share your values with our staff! Here are mine:
Be grateful Be a coach and be coachable Be relentless
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On Friday we will begin a new journey together! We will step into the journey of reflecting on ourselves as leaders as we start Lead Now training. Every one of us is a leader and we must be intentional about how we behave in this important role. Tim Kight reminds us that “what separates and great school from an average school is leadership. Not just the leaders in administration, but the leaders in every classroom.” Those leader are YOU!
Hilliard City Schools is the first school district anywhere to provide teachers with Lead Now training. This is going to radically change the way we behave and will help us look inward to grow ourselves into the best leaders we can be so that we can get the results we want from our students. I’m exciting for our next step in the journey to ELITE. Take a look at this less than 2 minute video in which Tim talks about what leadership REALLY is! Last week I wrote about being “full speed ahead”! I’m assuming that you’re still feeling like we’re moving at breakneck pace down the tracks. What I love about us is our sense of urgency and our “pay now instead of later” mentality. We are all in. We are getting stuff done! While I definitely want to encourage us all to keep moving forward with our great ideas and plans, I couldn’t help but be inspired this week by this picture of a squirrel who decided to take a minute to stop and smell a flower! (I never thought I’d type that sentence, but let’s face it, as principal at JW I’ve said and done a lot of things that I never could have imagined). I love this picture. It reminds me that we must take the time to see the beauty, wonder and magic that is around us. We are in a building filled with children who are so happy to be here with us each day. They say and do the funniest, sweetest things. Sometimes it’s easy to let the bad things, the stressful things or the hard things get our attention and distract from the joy and beauty that surrounds us. Today, I challenge you to stop and smell the flowers! Enjoy the days that you get to spend in a building full of children!
The school year is up and running and we are going full speed ahead without an end in sight! This time of year, it’s easy to begin to forget all of the goals we had for ourselves and our students not so long ago in those blissful days of August! It’s easy to fall back into old habits and old ways of thinking. And, it’s easy to tell ourselves that we were being way too ambitious when we thought about all we wanted to accomplish this school year.
So, today we need to remember that “we can do hard things”. We can reach our goals, but we must give ourselves time to do so. We must also hold ourselves accountable for the work we need to do to achieve our goals. It’s easy to give up when things get hard and when we feel bogged down by all of the things we “have to” do. Let’s remember what we set out sights on as we were planning for this year! Let’s remember that we do a lot of things well and we’ll get our reps in with those things so we can focus on getting better in the areas where we need to grow. We’re moving full speed ahead but we’re not going to allow ourselves to default to autopilot. I am going to continue to-get in classrooms, connect and control my R. What are you going to do? |
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