Leaders are Teachers; Teachers are Leaders

Clark Aldrich, author of Unschooling Rules: 55 ways to unlearn what we know about schools and rediscover education (2011, Greenleaf Book Group Press: Austin, TX), writes on page 59:

The process of educating entails leadership. The word "education" is from the Latin word for "to lead forth," just as the word "pedagogy" is from the Greek word "to lead."

Sarah discovered Aldrich's book and shared it with me. While Sarah and I don't agree with everything in it, he has really pushed on the status quo, the accepted paradigms of education, that just aren't working for our students in their world. The more we insist students be a part of our expectation for living, the more we push them further away from success in the world in which they must live: theirs, not ours.

If we accept the premise that educating is leading, that all pedagogy is leading people to another place in their lives, we are charged with understanding our leadership styles and the impact of those styles on the different situations and diverse students at Cooper. How are you leading? How do you see others leading? What are our responsibilities to each other to live up to our standards and improve our leadership with our students? What is our leadership legacy for our students?

All students deserve the best of us everyday. It's hard to keep up that energy, especially when we have so many pressures taking us closer to tired than energized, discouraged rather than encouraged. We lead students to believe that they carry their own weather: as do we. As we go through this tougher time of year with a very busy March followed by a full April, we still lead each day, each student, each family, and each other. Let's help each other grow in our leadership! We are a leadership school!

"Every day, adults are role models of learning (whether or not they want to be)." Clark Aldrich, Unschooling Rules, p. 73.


The schedule for this week includes:

Monday:   6th grade Whalers field trip

                 LEADS meeting (Terry) 8:00

                 Student Perception Surveys

Tuesday:  Mock BOTB today

                 IST 8:00

                 ASSET 9:00

                 Clubs 3:45-4:45

     Leo's Coney Night, 5-8 pm

Wednesday: Learning Lab at Cooper 8-11

                     Planning Team 3:45

                     

Thursday:    Staff Meeting, 8:00, All about packing for renovations!

                    Spring Picture Day

                    CCSS Meeting, 8:15-3:45

                    EPM, 1:00, (Sarah and Terry)

Friday:         ???????