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.