I strive to be a leader as I carry out my school counseling functions and that includes encouraging leadership in those around me. I came across this Ted Talk video that speaks to the vision I have for leadership and the impact I can only hope to make each day among students, families,and staff.
http://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership.html
As you guessed by my title, there is more to this story than the video clip above. I've talked in previous posts about choosing to be a leader as it relates to school climate and a positive school environment for the staff at my school (remember the Easter egg hunt?!). After Thanksgiving break I decided we all needed to have a little fun as we dealt with MAP testing, MClass progress monitoring, exhaustion, and holiday stress before the winter break. So, my principal graciously agreed to adopt a new member into our school family and STAR was introduced to the staff.
Each day, STAR has a new message for staff members as they go about their daily activities. I also post a picture of where STAR was the day before in our daily staff email just in case teachers didn't get a chance to find her. It has been a big hit so far, although there was some confusion on the first day when a teacher assistant thought you were supposed to turn STAR into the office for a prize if you found her. I quickly sent out an email reminding everyone not to touch her and referencing the Elf on the Shelf movie. Ha! As a side note, I only hide STAR in teacher areas so no children have been involved in this activity. It is solely for the staff. What are you doing to spread holiday cheer? Any good ideas for what STAR should do next?!Happy Counseling! ~ Angela (AKA Head Elf)
I love the idea of doing a morale booster at any time of the year, but do Christmas and Easter themes apply to all the staff at your school? I wonder because I have always worked at schools with diversity in many areas, including religion, and I think a lot about how to make sure my ideas are inclusive of everyone. If you have ideas that are more inclusive please share them too!
ReplyDeleteHey Lauren- Thanks for your comment! I try to do staff morale boosters every couple of months so they don't always coincide with a holiday. They might be seasonally themed (winter, spring break, etc.) or be unrelated to any particular time/month. I recently used this idea from http://entirelyelementary.blogspot.com/2012/08/beginning-of-year-theme-be-yourself.html to decorate my student and teacher bathrooms with motivating, positive quotes. She has free templates you can download and print. I also created a winter door decoration pass along to "Make Someone's Day", which I will blog about soon. You could use it all the way through January or February. You definitely have to know your school population when choosing morale boosters. I am in a rural area with less diversity at my school right now, but I came from an extremely diverse school where I implemented different ideas based on my population.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link! I definitely agree - it is always so important to know your population. And thank you for all the ideas on your blog!
ReplyDelete