Leadership Academy Teaches Kids to Transform Their Community
At Ni River Middle School, a push toward making students leaders is starting to show signs of success.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Donovan Tolbert doesn’t look the part of someone who struggled in school. He’s an accomplished and nationally-ranked track and field athlete at Kent State University, and fans in the stands saw someone who knew how to set goals, work toward them, weather the inevitable storms life brings, and achieve success.
But struggle he did, telling the students at Ni River Middle School last week that problems at home and in the classroom became, at times, overwhelming. Fortunately, his coaches and a teacher, Ms. Kaufman, helped him learn to deal with the challenges and become not only successful himself, but to transform the people around him for the better.
That message dovetails perfectly with the message that Ni River Middle School Principal Ashley Faaborg is promoting — “We are trying to grow leaders in this building.”
Growing Leaders
Leadership is a rich field that can be explored in a number of different ways.
At Ni River, leadership for students is focused on “building resilience, promoting responsible decision-making, and helping students take care of themselves socially, emotionally, and academically,” according to the school’s website.
Bringing in Tolbert as a motivational speaker is but one small part of a larger program that the school is engaged in.
Now in its second year, the Ni River Leadership program begins with the school-wide reading of a book aimed at helping students develop skills like decision making and time management.
This year’s book is Success Skills for Middle Schoolers: The Essential Middle School Survival Guide by Ferne Bowe. This text undergirds the weekly Falcon Focus block that happens each Monday, during which students actively work through the book and work on those skills.
To help teachers better do this, Faaborg said that Ni River’s faculty receive training in Kagan strategies, “which prioritizes the importance of connecting with students to foster a more engaging classroom and school community.”
The program is showing signs of success.
Faaborg references results on the Renaissance Fundamentals survey, a district-wide test of “nine non-academic factors that focus on how a student feels about their school and themselves as learners.”
Compared with results from last year, the assessment showed an increase in each of the nine factors, “with the most significant improvements,” Faaborg noted,” in … our English language learner, economically disadvantaged, and ethnic minority populations.”
Thirty percent of Ni River’s students are designated as economically disadvantaged, and 4% are designated as English Language learners. Some 40% of the school is composed of nonwhite students.
The leadership program, Faaborg said, has led to students having “increased positive feelings about school…, attitudes toward teachers, … confidence in learning, attitudes toward attendance, and response to curriculum demands,” among other things.
That growing confidence among students may also be starting to show up in the school’s academic performance.
Eight-grade reading results over the past two years have risen slightly, and the school is performing above district level and gaining ground on the state reading level.
The same trend is evident in 8th-grade match scores.
Expanding the Reach
Tolbert was the star last week, but students got a closer look at others in the community who also have become leaders.
After the motivational speech, students were given a “passport” that they used to visit up to nine community leaders for discussions about leadership. Students were encouraged to collect at least six stamps on the passport and to write one take-away from their talk. They were also asked to write a brief reflective speech about Tolbert’s message, and the leadership goal that they can work toward every day.
Time, of course, ultimately determines how successful the program will be, but Faaborg noticed little things that suggested the school is on the right path.
At the conclusion of Tolbert’s talk, Ni River students, without being asked, were folding tables and moving chairs back to their assigned locations.
“That’s leadership,” Faaborg said. It’s about making the community better.
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