STILLMAN VALLEY – Over the past two years, Highland Elementary School, in the Meridian School District, has been embarking on a journey of empowering leadership within their students.
In the 2018-2019 school year, Highland adopted the Leader in Me Framework. This program leverages the research from Stephen Covey in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
“We literally teach our kiddos from preschool to 2nd Grade the 7 habits. It is a lot easier than you’d think when they don’t have 30 plus years of bad habits to break,” said Joe Mullikin, principal at Highland Elementary.
Throughout this school year, teachers have taken intentional time to explicitly teach the 7 Habits during the school day. All of this work culminated on Friday, April 26th at the inaugural Leadership Day. Students, with the support of staff, used their leadership skills and the Habits to design an assembly and an event where they could show off their leadership learning.
On that day, nearly 200 parents, family and community members came to celebrate and learn from the students at Highland.
“I am so exceptionally proud of our students and our staff! I can’t wait to see how we continue to empower our students to lead moving forward,” Mullikin said.
Staff, students and administration want to extend a special thank you to our Superintendent, Dr. PJ Caposey, and our local Board of Education, for continuing to support such a great program for our students.
