Teachers, support staff, principals and other members of the community took part in a two-day seminar centred around Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The seminar was the first step toward turning Golden’s elementary schools into ‘Leader in Me’ schools, a program that gives students learning skills to enable them to reach a higher level of performance. Future sessions will discuss how Covey’s habits can be implemented into the schools.
Rotary Club member Greg Ehman helped spearhead the campaign to bring the program to Golden. Ehman first noticed the effects that Leader in Me had on his children’s school while his family was living in Comox.
“The differences we saw in the community from their engagement with their youth, leadership in the youth, to discipline issues…the overall positive results in the community were phenomenal,” Ehman said.
“One of the biggest indicators was that the reports of bullying and experiences of bullying in the classroom and in the community dropped exponentially.”
At last week’s session, attendees learned Covey’s 7 Habits, which include Habits of independence, interdependence and continuous improvement.
Laurier MacDougall, vice principal at Lady Grey Elementary and one of the participants last week, felt that the two days were a very productive start for the program.
“I think it just helps us refocus and redefine at the beginning of the school year. It gives us all common language to use with the students and really works on promoting our own strengths and that helps us promote the strengths of our students,” MacDougall said.
The 6th habit is to synergize through combining everyone’s strengths with positive teamwork. MacDougall thought that was a very appropriate summation of the two day session.
“It was really wonderful to have so many people together in one room…I felt the synergy in that room when you had opportunities to have conversations with so many different people,” MacDougall said.
Lady Grey principal Janne Arlt was similarly encouraged to see that the program was well received by the community.
“It’s really neat to see the support from the community members that were there as well. Everyone is there to help themselves but also to help the community and make Golden a better place,” Arlt said.
For more information on the Leader in Me program, visit theleaderinme.org.
