The first 8 days of school at Village Tech are a big deal. Why? I’m glad you asked. It’s because of The Leader in Me! The Leader in Me First 8 Days of school are the perfect opportunity for teachers and students to work together to set expectations, create positive relationships, and establish a culture of leadership within our classrooms, the Forge, and shared spaces. Stephen Covey said, “The First 8 Days help teachers to create collaborative, trusting, classroom cultures that last all year long.”
Each day is organized around one of the 7 Habits, with the last day focused on the 8th Habit, Find Your Voice. Learning about each day’s habits is knitted into the foundational activities we do at the beginning of school, like getting to know students, touring the campus, and establishing classroom routines.
Our teachers create unique opportunities for students to incorporate the 7 Habits through instruction and design each year. This year was no different.
Our Kindergarten class gave their “engine checks” during morning CREW! Engine checks are a quiet way of showing how we feel when we come to school every morning by showing “thumbs up” for “feeling great,” “thumbs sideways” for “feeling ok,” or “thumbs down” for “I’m not feeling great today.”
Several classes were busy sharpening their saws. To “Sharpen the Saw”, 7th-grade ELAR created a business that included all 4 dimensions. While 8th-grade students sharpened their saw by finger painting their 7 Habits clay model.
The 1st graders read the story “Only One You” to connect and learn about the 8th Habit. The characters in the story are fish that look like stones. They went on to create their stone fish.
To conclude our first 8 days of school, kindergartners read the book “My Mouth is a Volcano” combined with the Coke and Mentos experiment to better relate to the 8th Habit – Find Your Voice. They found that Diet Pepsi and Mentos made the tallest soda volcano!
You see, this is why the first 8 days are a big deal. Leader in Me exemplifies a universal approach to education and how we define and measure success through effective practices, instead of focusing on academic measures alone. We are proud to be a Leader in Me school implementing The First 8 Days program to kick off our school year!