Ep 55 | How Do We Cultivate Leaders? [RELOADED]

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I think that teaching those soft skills to kids, you know, be proactive, begin with the end in mind, have a plan before you get started. You know, know where you're heading so that you can't hit your target if you don't know where the target is.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Welcome to the Voices United in Education podcast. Each week we showcase the teachers, administrators, and community members who go the extra mile to contribute to the success of every student in Escambia County. You'll meet the real people behind the titles and learn about the amazing resources to support every student's success. Have you ever heard anyone complain about kids these days? They say kids don't have initiative, self-management. Everyone gets a participation award. While these criticisms may be over-generalized and overblown, we can all agree that there are certain soft skills necessary to effectively launch kids as productive members of society. My next guest is hoping to encourage those skills with a special program. She was the principal at a neighboring county school who saw the results of Leader in Me, a comprehensive leadership and life skills program. After a whole month of retirement, she boomeranged her way back into education, this time in Escambia County Public Schools. Today she's going to share why she is so passionate about the outcomes of this program and how it's benefiting our kids and community. Returning for her education encore, investing in future adults, curriculum coordinator at Sherwood Elementary, Deborah Phillips. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 1:47

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

I uh as I was preparing for our chat today, I got to thinking how funny it is that we attribute like these leadership qualities to adults. Like successful adults have XYZ leadership qualities. But when we think about successful students, we just think about good grades.

SPEAKER_00 2:06

Right. Right. It it is odd. Um because kids need a chance to show leadership skills too. Um and we just don't have that opportunity in school very often.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

No, no, which why is why I think this this program is really neat because it's uh not adding to their workload, it's just focusing it to launch into real life.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Right, right. It's students learning how to navigate this world so that they can be successful.

SPEAKER_01 2:41

And the program is based on a popular adult book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which I'm a fan of. But how did a book for business leaders become curriculum for elementary, middle, and high schoolers? What's the story of how this became a thing?

SPEAKER_00 2:58

So there was a principal named Muriel Summers, who was the principal of a school, an elementary school in North Carolina. And she attended the workshop, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, for herself. And when she got back to her school, she decided that there needed to be something for kids because she was so impressed with it, she thought that this this would be just what our kids need. So she actually contacted the Stephen Covey Corporation and she said, you know, what can we do about getting some curriculum for students? And so she actually wrote the curriculum along with um Stephen Covey and and people at Franklin Covey and came up with the seven habits of highly effective people and happy kids. So they they made a curriculum so that the seven habits could be watered down into um child-friendly language.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

That's incredible. What a neat origin story and how interesting that uh the Franklin Covey company was willing to work with her and saw the benefit.

SPEAKER_00 4:03

Yeah, I I think that's a that's a really neat story that that she could see the big picture of how this was going to impact students. Um and and then not only that, but took initiative to make sure that it happened.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Right. Yeah, it's one thing to say this needs to happen, and it's another thing very different to actually do the thing. But you've been doing the thing for 33 years.

SPEAKER_00 4:24

I've been in education a long time.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

A long time. That's amazing. So you've seen um all students in in all ranges of uh being equipped or ill-equipped with both hard and soft skills. Do you uh see these uh skill sets as somewhat separate or are they intertwined? What's your take on hard and soft skills and how it successfully uh supports students?

SPEAKER_00 4:54

Well, I think that especially at the elementary school age, well well, not just elementary school, in school period, just like you said earlier, we're we're hyper focused on grades and how our students doing academically. Um and a lot of time the students that are the top of the class aren't the ones who have the most um social emotional intelligence and being able to get along with other people. And so it's not that we're not focusing on the academic area, we are, but we're also looking at a paradigm shift of well, everyone can has leadership skills. So what can we do to produce a student that not only is academically proficient, but can also get along in a world with other people, that we don't live in silos, that that you know we can work together. So it has um interpersonal skills, more of the soft skills, and the first four habits, and then the last three habits are really about working with other people. And so we teach those habits through everything at school. I mean, they're not there is it's not a social studies habit or a reading habit or a math habit. It's just a habit of of being a good person, being proactive, not reactive, pausing before you respond, or um looking for win-win situations where you want something and I want something, but we don't have to give up what we want. We look for a third alternative. How can we both get what we need? So it's just really great habits for not only kids, everyone. What a better world we live in if everyone would seek first to understand before being understood, um, which is habit five.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Yes. And there's so many good habits in the book and certainly in the curriculum, but the two that you wanted to shine a light on today were goal setting and then more of the um internal aspects like self-management, executive function. Why are those two skills top of mind for you?

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Well, the first habit is being proactive. So if you just think if if everyone was just proactive and not reactive, I mean, how much better would your day be? I mean, Facebook would be better. Oh, 100%. Facebook, Twitter, everything would be better. Um, so I think that um teaching those soft skills to kids, um, you know, be proactive, begin with the end in mind, have a plan before you get started, you know, know where you're heading so that you can't hit your target if you don't know where the target is.

SPEAKER_01 7:19

And I can see where that skill is both academic, begin with the end in mind, right? So you want to have a scholarship options for whatever your plans are. So now you work backwards, but also like interpersonally, beginning with the end in mind in let's say social discourse. So are you trying to convert this person to your idea, which is certainly the right idea? Right. Or are you existing in this discourse to understand their point of view? And so that would determine by working backwards how you would behave in that interaction. That's that's pretty major.

SPEAKER_00 7:56

And what you're gonna do before you get there, what research do you need to do before just think about a um think about a job interview as an adult and you walk into the job and you have looked nothing up about this company or what whatever your your you know your job interview that you're going for, and you go in and you talk to the person, they're like, So what do you know about my company? And you go, Oh, I don't know anything.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

That you might give me money to show up every day. Right.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

I don't know. I just showed up hoping you could give me a job. But you know, a lot of a lot of times if you if you do it at homework before, if you begin with the end in mind, I really want this job. What do I need to know about this company before I walk in this door? Um and it and another thing that that we teach kids is um put first things first, work first and play. If you have homework, yeah, go ahead and do your homework and then go outside or or get on your on your uh PlayStation or whatever game you want to do, um, watch TV. So so just the first habits are all about that personal and internal part of getting yourself to be a better a better person. Um the second part that we we focus on a lot because we are a school and and academics do matter, um, we do a lot with um setting goals. So we call them wigs, w-i-g-s, which uh stands for wildly important goals. Lots of things are important, but you can only have a couple wildly important things.

SPEAKER_01 9:24

I like that so much. That's way more fun than what I learned, which was important and urgent and important. Or is it just urgent? Or is it just important? I love wigs way better.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

Yes. So we have our wigs at school, um, and we, you know, our wildly important goals are in reading and in math. We we want to be proficient in reading and math. So um the seven in in the leader in me, you learn how to set your goals. Um, you learn um it's X to Y by when. So I we we're at 50% proficient. We want to be 60% by proficient by our first progress monitoring time. And how we're gonna do that is by doing I ready every day, passing a lesson every day, or or um reading books every night, uh logging into Beanstack, whatever it takes for you to become a better reader or to become better at math, um, then you you keep a scoreboard of what you're doing. So let's say I'm gonna give myself, I have a regular calendar out, I'm gonna give myself a red dot on that calendar every time this week that I record my beanstack, or I'm going to give myself a yellow dot every time I pass an IRETY test. And I get to Friday and I look at my progress. Am I moving toward proficiency? Am I going up? Am I winning the game? Or I really didn't do very well this week. And my unit test on Friday, I bombed it. And I look back at my calendar, I go, well, you know, I didn't do anything this week. There's no dots on my calendar at all. So you learn to see that the more effort you put into it, the better your results are going to be when you get out of it. Um, and we focus a lot on the celebration at the end. So we actually, you know, we set those goals at school this year. We made our goal and we had a big carnival at school, which literally was just a bunch of games outside, kind of like a field day. We sink or swim together. The whole school makes it, or we don't get to have our um our celebration at the end. They might have it in their classroom if their classroom made it. It's kind of looks like a pyramid scheme a little bit. I hate to say that, but so the kids have a goal and then their class has a goal. So if the kids make their goal, the class will make their goal. Well, then the grade level has a goal. So if the kid makes their goal, the class makes their goal, then the grade level makes their goal, and then the school has their goal. So everybody, if everybody's doing their part, then we'll make our school goal at the end.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

That's fantastic. Does uh leader and me have wildly important goals as an organization?

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Oh, I'm sure they do. I I don't know what they are, but I'm sure they do. I I will tell you though that um leader and me pro social emotional process, the program, is in all 50 states and it's in 5,000 different schools in 50 different countries. So it's it's it's it's it's a pretty massive organization. So I'm sure they I'm sure they have some wildly important goals, probably to get into every country. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 12:18

Do you have goals for Sherwood?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Oh, yeah. Uh personal goals for Sherwood. Oh, yes. I I want Sherwood to be the best um school in Scambia County. That's my goal. Put us on top, number one. What would that look like? Uh it would look like a hundred percent of our kids being proficient in reading and in math. I want them all on grade level. I mean, you gotta aim high, right? And I also would like for people to say in the community, man, I want my kid to go to Sherwood. That's where I want my student.

SPEAKER_01 12:49

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 12:49

I I see that school. Have y'all seen what they're doing at that school? I want my kid to go there. Um, that's what I want to see for Sherwood School.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

What do you you rallied really hard to get this into Sherwood? I mean, you you you really hit the pavement hard to get it in there. And it is the only school in Scambia County public that has the program, correct?

SPEAKER_00 13:08

Yes, it's not the only one in Florida, but it is the only one in in this district. Um, we we were very passionate about it. Um, I talked with my principal when I first got there about leader and me, and uh, she said, we can't afford it, we can't afford it, we can't afford it. I was like, I know we can't afford it, we're a school. And um we did a book study with our leadership team at school. And at the end of the book study, um, everyone on the team was like, we don't know what it's gonna take to get this program, but we're ready to do it. We were ready to go door to door asking people to give us money um to get it off the ground. And um the district did come through. One of our district leaders who had been through the Seven Habits training and and knew how um important it is, said, I'll fund it and uh get got us the money for three years.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

That's exciting. What do you think the difference is for kids who get to have this program versus the ones that don't?

SPEAKER_00 13:58

I think that students that are involved in Leader and Me, they find their voice. They they realize that they can be something other than by being proactive, that they they don't have to settle for their lot in life. They can uh have a goal, they can achieve their goal because success begets success. So once they start seeing those successes, they can look, aim for for larger things. There's no reason you can't go to college or be career ready, or if you whatever it is you want to do, you you start thinking now about those things. Because when you get to high school, a lot of times it's too late. Um, I found that out with my own kids. We didn't have a leader in me, and they got to be a 11th grader getting ready to go to college, and you're like, wow, you needed that course? Oh, you needed that course. Oh, okay. I mean, beginning with the end in mind is a really important skill.

SPEAKER_01 14:48

It really is. And if the students can be invested in that process, it helps the parents because my I'm you know, thinking from personal experience, my parents were teenage parents. So they were overwhelmed like from day one. And I what you just said, oh, oops, you're in 11th grade. I, you know, in my memory at least, that's kind of how that went down. And I was um overwhelmed as my natural state, which is unfortunate, but the truth. So I I didn't, you know, I didn't know how to proceed in that process and uh thinking about the future felt very, you know, had a lot of anxiety around it. So I think it's neat that you can kind of harness that younger hope of the future and put it, put that energy in a positive direction that will make real life changes for the kids and for the families.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Yeah, we we hope to bring it into the family. There is a um, there is a family component to leader in me. Um so we'll be moving more into that next next year, next school year, um, trying to bring on board some families. You start with like a core group of families and do some workshops with them, teaching those families the habits. So it's not just in the school, we're gonna take it out into the community. Um, so we're pretty excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 16:12

That is exciting. We talk a lot about goals and setting goals. Um, something that I did learn growing up was all about the goals. Um, it just somehow didn't translate to future schools, which is sad and tragic. So I'm glad that you're putting those two together for our students. Um, but learning how to fail was something that was also a lesson that was, you know, within my household too. Is there anything in this program that teaches kids what to do, how to process missing a goal?

SPEAKER_00 16:47

I think that part of the um the soft skills goes back to that. So, like our last goal, we didn't we didn't make our last goal at school. Um, and it was gonna be a big, a big deal. Um, we were actually having March Madness tournament and we didn't make it as a school. And so we, you know, talked with the kids on the morning announcements about well, um, we all need to go back and reflect what did what did we do? Did everybody get their part done? Let's go back and and look, what could we have done differently to to um be more successful? So it it does it's it's not all about the the reward at the end, but of course, most of us work for a paycheck. Not very people volunteer um to go to work every day. So there there needs to be some reward. Um so we do have those celebrations, but but when we don't make it, we you know we just go back as learning experience to say, well, what can we do differently the next time? Did it and and and we look at our scorecards.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Well, then you're teaching through you know that real life experience, which is so much more memorable. I mean, for the kids to learn the lesson by experiencing it, not by reading about it. And so instead of a chapter of a book that's like what to do when you miss a goal, it's really together as a as a team, basically, is what you're saying. We'll figure out what to do next time. And that's what you do when you miss a goal.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Yeah, the reflection part's really important. No kidding. Because if you just if you just don't make it and you go, Oh, I didn't make it, better luck next time. I mean, you don't learn anything from that. Yeah, you have to go back and reflect on your practices. What did I do or what didn't I do in the leading up to the test or to the assignment or whatever it is that we're we're um giving them to academically.

SPEAKER_01 18:33

Yeah, what lesson is there to learn here? If a parent is listening to this and they want they want this program in their school, um, what can they do? Who can they get in touch with to kind of uh just communicate that desire?

SPEAKER_00 18:48

I would say they probably need to set up a time to talk to their principal at their school, their local administrator, um, and just say, um, you know, I heard about this on a on a podcast, and and we really would like to see our students have this opportunity and see if they can't find a way to to find the money to fund it. Um if you want something bad enough, then you'll probably to find a way to get it done. Um so yeah, they they should contact their administrator, their their personal principal. And if they need any questions asked, they can always call Sherwood School. We'll be happy to help.

SPEAKER_01 19:23

That's perfect. And lastly, what do you want people to know about Escambia County public schools?

SPEAKER_00 19:30

I I think that the um the teachers here are just um exceptional. They just really want what's best for kids and they're willing to go the extra mile, even if it means knocking on doors to get a program at our school. And you know, um, not very many people at like to go ask for money. And and Lord knows I didn't want to go ask for it either, but I was willing to go out and say, hey, we got this great thing that's gonna be important for kids. Can you help us? Um, and and they were on board with doing that, the teachers at our school, and it's not just our school, I think it's teachers, period. They're always going the extra mile to make sure kids have what they need or get kids what they need. Um, I've just never seen a group of people or professionals do the things that teachers do um out of their own pocket all the time. So I I would say that um one of the things that Escambia County is doing right is hiring great teachers.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Could not that could not be more perfectly said. Thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_00 20:33

Well, I appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Voices United in Education is a production of Escambia County School District. Special thanks to Pine Forest High School for their recording studio facilities and hospitality.