About the Author

I suppose before getting into our journey too much, I should tell you a little bit about myself and why I believe so deeply in what I am doing and what my school is creating.


First and foremost, I am a kid at heart. I love playing tag, building with legos and perfecting my coloring-in-the-lines skills. Sometimes when I am out to dinner with my now 21-month old, I find he has moved onto using the forks and knives as drumsticks and I am determined to finish the color-by-number picture.


I found teaching on accident. When asked what I wanted to do when I got big, my response was to change the world. My dad will tell you a story (or two) of a call from the principal when I was in 2nd grade. The principal said I wouldn't stop "cheating". My response (apparently) was that I was just trying to teach my friends. My dad tells me he knew then that I would be a part of something great or perhaps that was him looking at the glass half-full. Either way, he tells the story with pride.


I grew up volunteering in homeless shelters and soup kitchens. Some of my earliest memories are sitting at dingy tables in mismatched chairs explaining to old homeless men about Barbie's family tree (everyone doesn't know who Skipper is??) I remember working at a soup kitchen downtown once a month and my job was always to pass out the rolls. I don't think at the time I really understood what we were doing, but looking back I should've guessed it would lead to great things.


When I got a little older, the question turned to what do you want to be. My response? An artist. I wanted to make beautiful things. Maybe a book or a painting or a sculpture but something beautiful. With the popularity of computers in my generation, slowly artist turned graphic designer and after I began my program in college, I found print advertising and art direction.


I never stopped volunteering. It was a requirement of my household, in fact. My father provided us food, housing, a busy vacation life, etc. Our jobs were to get good grades and volunteer. In high school, I volunteered at a nursing home for 2 hours everyday after school and occasionally I would tutor at the Elementary School down the street.


In college, I used my summers to pay it forward. In 2005, I went to Chicago, Illinois and volunteered in a Head Start program. I still remember being so blown away by the 4 year olds participating in what I now know as family style dining. They were using their manners and passing the bowls of food around the table like adults. I was blown away. 


In 2006, I went to Denver, Colorado with the same program and worked at a summer camp program. Because these children lived in the lowest of economic classes, they were often 2 and 3 grades behind academically. Our job was to support them in smaller ratios in order to catch them up. That summer something happened... I fell in love. I fell in love with the kids, with the program, with teaching. I still remember talking with my supervising teacher and telling her how much I loved my time there and that maybe Marketing/Advertising was not the path for me after all. She asked me what I was waiting for.


I graduated the following summer and got my first job in a preschool. Each week, each day, each interaction with each child proved I was finally on the right path. This was the path I was being guided to in 2nd grade as I tried to help my friends finish their tests. This was my path to creating beautiful things (or people) and to changing the world. And maybe, just maybe one day, I will even write a book to tell about it.

Where it Began...

For me, as a preK teacher at a private preschool, it began from the top. Becoming a Lighthouse School through The Leader In Me wasn't my idea, it wasn't even a welcomed idea at first. To pilot a leadership program to children ages 0-5 had never been done before. This program had only been implemented in elementary schools and less than 20 in the world had achieved this great task... to say the idea of this was overwhelming would be an understatement.


The first step in the process was to get trained. To teach leadership, you must be a leader or at least have all of the tools to be moving toward being a better leader. Dr. Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, offers the training that couples with The Leader In Me. The owners of the corporate locations of my preschool as well as the owner of my school were ready to make this pricey investment in us, their teachers.


To say the training is life-altering is also an also understatement. This training moves through the 7 Habits on a very personal level, allowing you to connect with the leader inside you. It teaches you that leaders aren't always the president or the CEO or the boss, but in fact, we are all leaders and we lead ourselves in the direction we choose to go and to meet the goals we wish to achieve. Each habit is a way to shift your thinking or in Dr. Covey's words, your paradigm, to change the lens in which you see things just as the simple old saying "Is the glass half full or half empty?" suggests.


Once your perspective, or lens, or paradigm is shifted to see the leader in yourself and in everyone around you, well that is it, you can't control it, the sky is the limit and there is not stopping where this will take you.


What I found through taking the training were areas in which I needed to grow. I found that I wasn't really listening with my ears, eyes, mind AND heart when a friend had a problem but listening with the intent to reply, which truly isn't listening at all. 


I learned to prioritize, stay focused and live my life staying true to my goals in all the different roles I played.

I discovered a leader in me that I had never seen before. The tools in the training inspired and excited me to be a better educator, wife, daughter, friend, woman and with all those tools in my toolbag for life, I was ready to unleash the leader within.


But that was just the beginning... beyond me, beyond my coworkers, beyond our supervisors... the end in mind was becoming a Leadership School, a Lighthouse School. How were we going to transform these 7 Habits of Happy Kids for kids of 1, 2, 3, and 4 years of age? It seemed crazy at first but Apple said it best, "The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."


We were crazy, but we are doing it. We are changing the world, one preschooler at a time.


In this blog, I plan to revisit everything that has happened in the last 2 years, to document our journey to Lighthouse status and hopefully leave my legacy in a way to blaze a trail for others to follow in our footsteps.