Bentonville school fosters leadership among students

Adithi Sabariprasap, Mary Mae Jones Elementary School first-grader, leads a tour Thursday of the art room at the Bentonville school. The school hosted Leadership Day to highlight the Leader in Me program.
Adithi Sabariprasap, Mary Mae Jones Elementary School first-grader, leads a tour Thursday of the art room at the Bentonville school. The school hosted Leadership Day to highlight the Leader in Me program.

BENTONVILLE -- There isn't just one leader or two leaders at Mary Mae Jones Elementary School. There are more than 600 of them, according to Principal Ashley Williams.

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NWA Democrat-Gazette

Daniel Furlano, Mary Mae Jones Elementary School first-grader, plays the drums Thursday at the Bentonville school. The school hosted Leadership Day to highlight the Leader in Me program.

"Every student in this building has a leadership role," Williams said, standing in the middle of a congested second-floor hallway Thursday.

Leader in Me schools

Here are the Northwest Arkansas schools that have adopted the Leader in Me program:

• Eastside Elementary School (Rogers)

• Holcomb Elementary School (Fayetteville)

• Lincoln Elementary School

• Lincoln Middle School

• Mary Mae Jones Elementary School (Bentonville)

• Owl Creek School (Fayetteville)

• Pea Ridge Intermediate School

• Pea Ridge Primary School

• Vandergriff Elementary School (Fayetteville)

• Washington Elementary School (Fayetteville)

Source: www.TheLeaderInMe.o…

The halls were filled with parents and community members who had turned out for the school's Leadership Day, a chance for the school to show off the culture it has developed under The Leader in Me program.

The program is a whole-school transformation model that aims to empower students with the leadership and life skills they need to thrive in and out of school. Principles outlined in Stephen Covey's book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People play a major role in The Leader in Me.

As part of the program, students are entrusted with different jobs at school, ranging from making morning announcements to delivering intra-school mail.

Jones Elementary School is in its fourth year in the program. A team from Franklin Covey Co., which operates The Leader in Me, will visit Tuesday to determine whether the school qualifies for Lighthouse status.

Lighthouse status is a recognition schools earn because they have produced outstanding results in school and student outcomes by implementing The Leader in Me with fidelity, according to the organization's website.

More than 2,500 public, private, charter and magnet schools worldwide have adopted The Leader in Me since it officially launched in 2009. Only 206 have achieved Lighthouse status.

The only two Lighthouse schools in Arkansas are in Fort Smith and Greenwood. Williams believes Jones Elementary is worthy of becoming the third. The school will be notified of its status within two to four weeks after the Franklin Covey team's visit.

The Leader in Me is "part of our culture, it's who we are," Williams said.

Thursday's event attracted about 200 people, including politicians such as state representatives Dan Douglas and Jim Dotson, both of Bentonville.

Students led small groups of adults on a school tour, making numerous stops along the way to hear other students discuss various aspects of The Leader in Me.

At one stop, 10-year-old fourth-graders Kiera Sanders and Carson Southern explained the seven habits mural painted on a wall near the main office. The mural is of a tree with each of the seven habits listed. The first habit is to be proactive.

"That means you make your own decisions and you don't let anyone else make them for you," Kiera said.

The seventh habit is to "sharpen the saw," which means achieving a healthy balance both physically and mentally, Carson said.

The Leader in Me "teaches kids more about ways they can be nicer to each other and make a better community," Carson said.

Vedaant Shah, a 9-year-old third-grader, welcomed visitors to the school gymnasium and talked about a program through which students earn stickers, beads and charms by running certain numbers of laps around the playground.

Visitors also got to see a "wax museum" -- a project of the third-graders, who each had picked a famous person to study for several weeks. The wax museum consisted of the students posing as those people while reciting facts about their lives.

Tatianna Falcon, 9, chose to portray Elvis Presley. She wore a gold jacket and shoes while holding a small pink guitar. Tatianna said she has been an Elvis fan since she was 4.

"I've liked him so much -- his music, his outfits, his creativity," she said. "I've always been fascinated with his music."

Sojourner Truth, Muhammad Ali and Leonardo da Vinci were among the other famous figures represented by students.

Hannah Graves, a third-grade teacher, said the wax museum project encourages leadership in students because they are each in charge of their own exhibit. They are encouraged to pick people who are leaders and explain how each person demonstrates one of the habits of highly effective people.

"They each find their own voice in this project," Graves said. "It's neat to see how they get to shine in their own way."

Williams credits The Leader in Me with an overall improvement in the school's atmosphere, better attendance, better academic performance and fewer behavioral issues among students.

Jones Elementary School was the only building in the Bentonville School District to receive a D on its report card from the state this year, though it fell short of a C by just one point. The school earned a B on last year's report card.

Many schools saw similar declines in their grades. New standardized tests on which the report card is based had something to do with that, school administrators have said.

The report card grade was based on one test, Williams said.

"We are giving students skills that will last them a lifetime," she said. "Because of that implementation of Leader in Me, we have seen growth when we talk about the whole child."

The school received a $56,000 grant four years ago to pay for the materials and training it needed to implement The Leader in Me. The only recurring cost of the program is for additional student leadership activity guides, which is minimal, Williams said.

NW News on 05/13/2016

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