By Stephen Smoot
It took three years of dedication, belief, hard work, and working as a team to make it happen.
Last week East Hardy Elementary School welcomed visitors from across the county and from around the state. They arrived in Baker early in the morning to hear from students, faculty, and staff about how the school pulled together and earned status as a Lighthouse school through embracing excellence and promoting leadership.
Guests arrived just before 9 AM, greeted by excited and happy children from the youngest grades. The children sang “hello neighbors, what do you say? It’s going to be a happy day!”
Above the heads of the students in the entry foyer hung colorful banners reminding all of the core of the program that conferred this special status on the school. Each banner articulated one of the seven habits of highly effective people that the programs seeks to instill in every student under a program called “The Leader In Me.”
Like many programs available to students at all levels, such as 4H, Future Farmers of America, the JackBots Robotics team, and much more, the Leader In Me program emphasizes the development of communication, organization, planning, and execution of steps to reach important goals.
Many employers have found these skills wanting in many coming from recent generations, making this program a foundation not just for school, but for life.
After dignitaries passed the students greeting them at the door, older students on the Lighthouse team signed them in and left them to assigned tables. With nary an adult in sight, each handled their role professionally and with courtesy. Students sitting at the sign in desk wore business attire while others sported identical “Lighthouse” T shirts.
Those in attendance included Board of Education members, retired faculty, representatives from businesses and the community. A cadre of representatives from Wetzel County Schools came from the Ohio River Valley to learn more about the success of East Hardy.
Brianna Suit and Bear Poe represented the student body in kicking off the presentation. Each member of the student Lighthouse team introduced themselves. Suit told the attendees “we want everyone to see the greatness” while Poe shared “we will now introduce you to the seven habits.”
Students read off examples, such as “I don’t blame others when I make mistakes,” “I make plans and goals for myself,” “I think about how my choices will affect my future,” “I think of how everyone can win,” and “seek first to understand, then to be understood.”
Poe then shared the school mission statement and explained that it helps students to think about “who you are as a person and how you want others to see you.”
Each student then read off their personal mission statement. At East Hardy, the school, each class, and each student came up with mission and vision statements. Many students shared that when faced with tough decisions in life, they would mentally refer back to their mission statement to help them to make the wisest choice.
Student mission statements included “We are safe. We are kind. We are responsible to be a good leader and make our goals happen.” Others stated “I want to be a math master in multiplication,” and “I will be a leader who helps my friends succeed.”
Emily Morris, East Hardy Elementary School principal, has said that the program rests on the ideal that every child has genius and that every child can be a leader. This does not mean that every child will break ground in astrophysics like Albert Einstein or win election as President or Governor. It does mean that each child has special talents that can lead to success in life. Additionally, everyone can show leadership in their individual style in whatever role they find themselves.
At East Hardy, this translates into students earning special roles. One very young man told the audience as Suit helpfully held the microphone “this is a job I really like to do. It’s chair stacker. It shows I am strong!”
Another shared “my job is line leader. I wanted to be line leader because I can lead people safely to where they want to be.”
The jobs give students a sense of ownership and pride, in themselves, in their classmates, and in their school.
Morris then informed attendees that they were about to experience “the WIG parade.” In Leader In Me, “WIG” stands for “wildly important goals.” This instructs children on how to set priorities. Every student in the school walked with their class through the attendees with cards carrying an example of their “wildly important goal.”
“You really have to think about the actions that will get you to that goal,” Morris related, then shared the term “lead measures,” which means what actions most effectively start one toward fulfilling the goal.
They demonstrated pride in their goals often by colorfully decorating the card. “WIGs” ranged from planning to achieve better in math to working on getting better at basketball and baseball. Others took pride in learning German and American Sign Language. Another card stated “I improved drawing dragons.” The point lay in choosing an important personal goal and learning how to succeed in it, no matter what it was.
As they showed off their goals, they marched to the old song “Happy” by Pharrel Williams and the older “Celebrate” by Kool and the Gang.
Attendees then got to get on their feet and see projects created by each class. Sixth graders offered a living wax museum where they portrayed historical figures such as Alice Paul, Henry Ford, and Ronald Reagan. Fourth grade created a representation of Jamestown colony on the Minecraft video game and used it to present on the settlement’s history and importance.
Every class had their own project and took pride in showing it. One of the classes demonstrated their learning of sign language to the attendees in the library as their project.
The journey does not end with certification after three years. Reviewers gave East Hardy a slate of “plusses and deltas.” Plusses mark achievements and deltas indicate areas that require more work. Even though East Hardy took an unusually short period of time to achieve Lighthouse certification, to get recertified, they must show progress on the limited number of “deltas” received.
Steady development and progress over eight years will earn East Hardy designation as a “Legacy” school, the highest honor conferred by the program.
Alexandra Dunithan, one of the students who explained the progress over time. She stated that “we have worked three years, three years. That’s a long time.” Dunithan shared that “we weren’t surprised” to earn the designation.
“We were so excited. Everyone was screaming, cheering,” Dunithan remembered, adding “we worked very hard! Months and months and years!” She then explained how the evaluation team was supposed to come in February, but weather delayed it until March, then “it was like, rush, rush, rush, rush getting the school ready.”
“It was worth all the effort, all the years, all the waiting, she said.”
Students also told of how the program changed the culture of the school. One student explained that one of the major changes lay in its effect on bullying. He explained “we had seen a bit of bullying, but it’s small now. It’s very rare to see bullying happen in our school now.”
The student added that “we want people to be who they want to be. We teach the nice things when they are little, so they can grow up to do nice things.”
