'I am a leader'

A first grader calls to attention her fellow classmates with one simple word.
“Class?”
“Yes?” they respond in unison.
She calls them to attention once more as they prepare to show off Stephen R. Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” to a room full of community and business leaders from across the southern part of the state.
The habits are sandwiched between a sentence that the students are not just saying because they were taught it, but because they believe it.
“I am a leader!”
And it is through that — the Leader in Me Program — that local schools Ross Elementary and Martin Petitjean Elementary, as well as other schools, have really found their way.
The Leader in Me Program is based solely on the seven habits and its origins are less than two decades old.
In 1999, a principal, Muriel Summers of A.B. Combs Elementary in Raleigh, North Carolina, found her school in crisis. With enrollment numbers down, her superintendent urged her to do something before the school’s doors would be closed.
Summers found herself at a conference featuring the habits and looked to Covey. She wondered if the habits could be used in the schools with kids as young as five. Covey was a bit skeptical, but Summers was determined.
It worked. Enrollment numbers have jumped and now there’s a waiting list to get into the school, which was named the number one magnet school in the country in 2006.
Now, the program is in thousands of schools worldwide and 20 schools in the United Way of Acadiana’s four-parish umbrella, after making its way to Acadia Parish via Kim Cummins at Martin Petitjean Elementary.
Facing issues of her own at the Rayne elementary school, Cummins turned to the program which had begun gaining traction across the country, and the globe.
The school’s successes haven’t gone unnoticed as Martin Petitjean has been named a Lighthouse School in the program and was recognized this past year as one of the state’s four National Blue Ribbon Award nominees.
“Central Rayne Kindergarten actually has their final evaluation this Friday and could join Rayne Catholic and Martin Petitjean as a Lighthouse School,” said Stacy Romero, community collaborations manager at United Way of Acadiana. “To have three in one parish is practically unheard of.”
All three of those schools are located in Rayne.
But as things continue to improve at the Rayne schools, so too are they at Ross Elementary. And it was, in part, Martin Petitjean’s acceptance and successes with the program that sold Ross principal Paula Cutrer on the program when she began her tenure there.
“When I first got to Ross, I had concerns,” she said at the April committee meetings of the school board.
She first went to Martin Petitjean as well as a conference on the program and walked away impressed, then she turned to her teachers and had them visit some of the schools in which the program has been instituted.
“They just loved it!” she said.
The 7 Habits focus on three main criteria points: independence, interdependence and continuous improvement.
The first three habits fall under the independence ladder, they call for students to learn to be proactive, to begin with the end in mind and put first things first.
Under the interdependence umbrella are habits four through six, which sees the child think win-win, seek first to understand then to be understood and to synergize.
The seventh habit, sharpen the saw, is about continuous improvement.
That’s a mighty tall task for students to grasp, especially younger ones. But grasp it they are and they are and the results are showing in Acadia Parish.
Along with learning the habits, the students also each have leadership roles and individual goals to accomplish throughout the year.
For example, a third grader may set a specific Accelerated Reader goal, and he or she must hold himself or herself accountable.
“Each student has a leadership role,” said Cutrer.
As Romero expanded, the children’s leadership roles are not designed to make everyone the same leader in everything. It highlights a student’s strengths and focuses on making him or her a leader in that area.
And they are doing so day after day.
“I had a child show me his portfolio ... and he was a little upset with himself. He said, ‘I have this goal to read’ a certain something ‘and I haven’t reached it yet, but I’m working harder to reach my goal’,” said Board Member John Suire at April’s Acadia Parish School Board committee meetings.
The topic arose after a complimentary comment about the program by fellow Board Member David Lalande.
Lalande was among roughly 50 community leaders in attendance at Central Rayne Kindergarten’s program last month.
“I was impressed last year, but I was even more impressed this year because it is unbelievable how, when you teach kids really practical, common sense things that you and I may or may not practice — and adults can learn from this, myself included — they understand what’s going on ... and it affects every part of their lives,” Lalande said. “It’s more than just a recital.”
The goals also aren’t just academic and personal, as the students are setting goals to help the school reach it’s “WIGs” (widely-important goals).
Each school’s Leader in Me program is tailored for that school, meaning it isn’t a curriculum everyone has to follow a certain way. But no matter how the program is particularly introduced into the school, United Way is happily seeing similar returns in all its investments (of the 20 schools, United Way is currently supporting 14 schools and is looking to bring up to seven more schools onto the program next year, including more in Acadia Parish).
“(The results are) obvious in the sort of changes we are seeing,” said Romero.
Those changes are not just at school as it has had filter-out effects into the community and at home.
“Martin Petitjean has had their students picking up trash and even telling their parents to not litter,” said Romero.
“When I get my ‘babies’, the (current) kindergarten kids who are siblings of these kids, they know those seven habits,” said Cutrer.
“It’s just a difference in the environment (now). Those kids are proud of what they’re doing and what they have.”
It’s those kinds of results that have United Way and many schools outside their umbrella chomping at the bit to make the program bigger.
Romero explained that, in the future, United Way hopes it can support all the schools — even if it is just providing a pool of information to the school — and looks to create a better community by hopefully seeing the program installed from elementary through high school levels.
“Imagine what kind of work force we’ll be turning out if we could do that,” she said.