1.Building a Classroom Culture of Student Leadership

2. Aligning Actions to Purpose

3.Growing Daily

 

1)    I don't see this process sequential, rather they can be happening simultaneously, or at different points in time. For example building partnership involves not only students, but teachers of the school, the administration, parents and the community. One can chose to engage with each of these partners at different points in time. So for example while this sequence of actions makes a lot of sense when it comes to our students, in my context it does not apply in this order when it came to building relationships with parents and the community, since "aligning actions to purpose" came first.

2)    Furthermore another insight, which really comes from my own personal experience, and might fit into the “building partnership” category but not highlighted enough, is to find or identify for our students a supportive individual. I am saying this, purely in the context that I taught, because even if the kids are well invested into the long-term vision they might not be able to sustain long enough once you are no longer in the classroom. Most of the time we might think that parents are those supportive individuals but as it was in my context it was not the case for some students. Hence you need therefore this one individual present in our student’s life who is as invested in the long term vision or cause as your kid is. 

With regard to team work, I would like to know if at the beginning students tended to be competitive, and if it was difficult to achieve that degree of empathy and mutual support. I wonder this, because most of Colombian students have been taught to be the first, so, how difficult it can be to teach empathy to students who were not taught that way since the first school years? What process or methodology can be helpful?