ELLY GRIMM
• Leader & Times
The schools throughout USD 480 produce great work every day in and out of the classroom and recently, Eisenhower Middle School racked up a prestigious recognition.
Last week, it was announced Eisenhower Middle School was certified as a Leader in Me Lighthouse School by FranklinCovey Education. As Principal Randi Jones tells it, the road to getting this certification began multiple years ago.
“The staff at Eisenhower Middle School decided to venture into Leader In Me about four years ago, shortly after COVID-19 and everything going on then. We needed a little something to help with student motivation and all of that. Leader In Me is based on Steven Covey's book 'The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,' and when we started, we started by training just the teachers and staff in those seven habits and working on practicing them throughout the building,” Jones said. “From there, we set all the teachers and staff up on action teams, which is part of the model for Leader In Me schools, and we started gathering perception data from students, faculty/staff, parents and other community members. Every staff member was on an action team and would get a section of that perception data, and then there are some other evidence-based practices that were implemented throughout the school to help increase culture outcomes, academic success, and student leadership. We started everything with the adults, and once we had all of those systems working and in place, we started teaching the Leader In Me curriculum to the students, which focuses on teaching those seven habits to the students at their grade level. They get those in the mornings during homeroom time with that teacher and really get all of those components in place with the students. Now, we're venturing into more student-led action teams and they're starting to look at some of that data and talk about what they like about the school, what needs improvement, and everything in between.”
The Lighthouse Certification is earned by schools that demonstrate the following:
• The principal, school administration, and staff engage in ongoing learning and develop as leaders, while championing leadership for the school.
• Leadership principles are effectively taught to all students through direct lessons, integrated approaches, and staff modeling. Students are able to think critically about, and apply, leadership principles.
• Families and the school partner together in learning about The 7 Habits and leadership principles through effective communication and mutual respect.
• The school community is able to see leadership in the physical environment, hear leadership through a common language, and feel leadership through a culture of caring, relationships, and affirmation.
• Leadership is shared with students through a variety of leadership roles. Student voice leads to innovations within the school.
• Schoolwide, classroom, family, and community leadership events provide authentic environments to celebrate leadership, build culture, and allow students to practice leadership skills.
• The school utilizes the 4DX® process (The 4 Disciplines of Execution) to identify and track progress toward Wildly Important Goals® (WIGs) for the school, classroom, and staff.
• Students lead their own learning with the skills to assess their needs, set appropriate goals, and carry out action plans. They track progress toward goals in Leadership Notebooks and share these notebooks with adults in Student-Led Conferences.
• Teacher planning and reflection, trusting relationships, and student-led learning combine to create environments for highly engaged learning.
Jones said initially, she and staff were somewhat hesitant about doing trying for the certification.
“As part of our contract with Leader In Me, we have an implementation coach who comes three or four times a year and monitors our progress and provides guidance and encouragement and helps us interpret our data,” Jones said. “She started prompting me in early 2024, but I was kind of unsettled about it because I didn't want to put too much on the plates of our students and faculty and staff since there's already a lot that goes on throughout the school year, and I didn't want to overwhelm them. But she kept prompting us and celebrating our successes, and we also had the chance to visit some other Leader In Me schools in the region, and during those visits, we started thinking 'We have all these factors in place, and we're doing a great job where we are!' So last spring, I finally told our implementation coach 'Let's talk to the staff Lighthouse leadership team and get a feel for what they think,' and they all ended up being completely on board with it. It's a pretty extensive process because we have to gather data and evidence about what we've been working on in terms of culture, academics, and leadership, and then we have to submit all of that. We also hosted a visit for certifiers from other Leader In Me schools from other states, and that visit was actually primarily initiated by the students, who took those certifiers on a tour and explained everything we'd been doing on campus. They got to see the staff in the classroom and really teaching the curriculum to the students, and the certifiers also got to do an interview with the student leadership team and looked at the different portfolios. Those certifiers also did interviews with me and some of the staff members and members of our parent panel so they could get a complete picture of what we've done. All of that happened in October, and then we had to wait about a month to hear back from them.”
Upon getting the official news, Jones said there was a lot of excitement.
“We also kept the news under wraps from the staff, and there were only a few of us who had heard the official news. But of course, it's hard to really keep anything secret from the front office staff since they hear EVERYTHING, so they were also aware, and I did let our Leader In Me coordinator know since she invested a lot of time and work into everything,” Jones said. “After I let those few key people know, we kept things somewhat under wraps until our most recent student assembly, and there was a lot of whooping and hollering and excitement from everyone. There have been a lot of feelings from everyone throughout this entire journey, and I'm really, really proud of our building staff and how much they've embraced the Leader In Me concepts and how rewarding this all is. We've talked a lot about how it would be cool to be to achieve Lighthouse status, but we know that doesn't matter as much as the impact we make with the students throughout the process. We've seen them build confidence and leadership skills and problem-solving skills and much more, so it's great seeing the student body be so focused on doing good and performing well academically and helping their fellow students and in the community. Seeing all of that growth throughout this journey among the faculty/staff and students has been amazing, and getting the Lighthouse status is rather the cherry on top. We're definitely not done, we want to keep doing better every day.”
Getting the Lighthouse certification means Eisenhower Middle School will be an example for other schools, Jones said.
“As a Leader In Me Lighthouse school, Eisenhower Middle School will be a model for other schools and will show other schools what being a Leader In Me school is all about. Getting this recognition really affirms how we have everything in place to be a highly effective school, and we're starting to see a bunch of great results in terms of improved academics and improving the overall school culture and increased leadership,” Jones said. “Becoming a Lighthouse schools really affirms we have all of those components in place to be an exemplary school and be a model for other schools so when they're thinking about becoming a Leader In Me school, they can look at us as an example and use the same tools we have. Eisenhower Middle School is also the first secondary school to achieve Lighthouse status, there are many more elementary schools that have achieved that recognition, and the certifiers even told us there were so many great things we were doing that will be helpful for other secondary schools to implement.”
And to add on to the good news, Eisenhower Middle School is also the first middle school in Kansas to receive the Lighthouse notification, which Jones said was also very exciting to learn.
“When our implementation coach presented the option to the staff Lighthouse team, they were really excited about it, and then she told us there weren't any middle schools in Kansas to be recognized yet, they were definitely in and wanted to help Eisenhower Middle School be the first,” Jones said. “My staff is really competitive, and wanting to be the first Lighthouse middle school definitely provided some extra motivation.”
Jones added she and her staff are certainly not planning on slowing down.
“We really want to continue a lot of the good work we've already put in place. Even though we've achieved Lighthouse status, we're not content to rest on our laurels and we're not quite where we want to be,” Jones said. “We do want to continue to increase the amount of student leadership opportunities – we're doing really well with that with extracurricular activities and our student Lighthouse team, but we want to help every student feel like they have the opportunity to be a leader in the school. We want to increase the amount of those opportunities in the classroom and throughout the school, whether it's with student-led morning announcements or student greeters or things like that so we can reach every student. We also want to continue strengthening our partnerships in the community and with our students' parents, that's something we've been investing in more for this year through various opportunities like newsletters and conference opportunities and things like that. Academics-wise, there are some improvements to be made there, but we have made some great gains in our reading and math scores, and we want to continue seeing students improving to where they're performing at grade level. This recognition is really an affirmation of all the hard work our staff and students have done in terms of embracing the Leader In Me principles, and it's great how much they love the students and want them to succeed. Everyone has dove right into this and done an exceptional job, and I'm proud to see them be recognized for their work.”
