Odyssey Elementary School hosted five schools from across Southern Colorado for a “The Leader In Me” Coaching Day, on Monday, Feb. 6.
“The Leader in Me” framework is inspired by the “7 Habits of Highly Effective People” by Stephen Covey. The strategy equips staff to instill leadership in students, while promoting active student participation in strengthening the campus culture and overall academic achievement.
“Leader In Me supports the whole child. We want to balance academic learning, but whole person learning. Leader In Me gives us a structure to do that really well in schools,” said Alex Martin, LIM coach.
OES has been using the program since 2017.
“Today is all about collaboration and partnering with other schools in order to learn from each other,” said Martin “The goal today is community learning, peer collaboration.
Despite the limited number of days and hours during the school year, coaching meetings are important for staff and program development.
“As we strive to maximize learning for our students each day, time is one of the most finite resources for our staff,” Principal Kris Levi said. “During this collaborative meeting, we were able to sit down with other schools in the region to exchange ideas, successes and questions.”
Assistant Principal Amy Willis said, “Meetings like these allow school campuses to share their genius, learn from others, and get positive feedback too. Teams are given time to work with a variety of schools and learn from one another. Then we bring back the new learning to our building teams.”
One idea they are bringing back to Odyssey from this meeting is a way to celebrate student success.
“We are planning on creating a recognition wall to highlight how individual students are demonstrating leadership skills,” Levi said.
This was the first time OES hosted a coaching day for LIM. “Odyssey has done some great work over the years. This is an opportunity to showcase their greatness,” said Martin.
Levi said, “Working in schools, we are constantly striving to improve. However, it's also important to celebrate successes. Because of this meeting, we were able to receive compliments from other schools and more fully realize the great things we are doing for our kids. Going forward, we are excited to continue to help students track their learning progress as well as positively recognize individual students to help them along their path.”
The school administrators and teachers attending the coaching day were also given a tour of OES by four students. Fifth graders Mikah Garcia-Lucas and Santiago Rodriguez, and fourth graders Kendal Gleba and Nathan Moffat were prepared with short descriptions of classrooms and educational material to share with the guests as they made their way through the building. They answered questions about how their daily studies and Leader In Me ideals worked together.
More information on Odyssey and The Leader In Me can be found in the Fall 2022 edition of Discover D49 Magazine.
