What did you see that made you bet the whole school on that idea?

Vicki, first of all, I am a big fan and quite honored to be part of this this morning.

I'm reminded that through incredible challenge often comes wonderful opportunity, and I think if there was a quote that captured that first year for me as a principal, it would be that.

I really didn't even know what I was doing.

I had so longed to be a principal for a while, and that was my goal.

The way the story goes is that several people applied to be the principal of A.B. Combs.

When they did their homework, whatever their reason, they withdrew their names.

Mm.

What we

also did within a week's period of time, because we had to present a new idea to our school board based on can't be like anything else.

You're not going to have a lot of money in which to make it happen.

And so we called in our parents, our students, our teachers, university professors, because we are like, I don't know, three miles from NC State University, 20 miles from UNC Chapel Hill.

We pulled in university people and we asked the question, if you could create your ideal school, what would it look like, sound like, and feel like? And we gathered all that feedback.

Teachers wanted students that respected them.

They wanted to work in an environment where they had a voice.

We had

Uh-huh.

And our school was in, um...

At that time, I was assigned the principal of a very low-performing school, a school where, uh, and it was a magnet school, and it, um, what happened was the theme we had was no longer a vibrant, thriving theme.

So we had to come up with something, um, and we weren't sure what that was gonna be.

But the charge was it had to be unique.

It had to be like no other magnet theme at that time.

Now mind you, that was over 25 years ago, and no elementary school that we could find in the country at that time was focused on leadership development based on Dr. Covey's habits.

Oh, not a problem.

I wanted to ask you just to kinda start off with the, the work of, uh, you're, uh, you're building, but also the, the book, which is why is leadership-- why should it be focused on for kids at all? What i- what is it about it, in your words, that is, is so significant for now to be the time for people to start making this shift to thinking about leadership for kids in a different way?

way?That's a great question, um, Jacob.

It causes me to pause for just a minute and think about our role as educators.

You know, for most of my career, I felt my goal as a principal was to help children do well while they were in school.

What I have become to realize is that our jobs are to help children do well after they leave us, and what are the skills and what is the toolkit, if you will, that we need to help students pack so that they are equipped to do well in life.

So if we only focus on the academics, and yes, that is our core business and, and it is important that we have very high expectations for our children, and more importantly, that we c- create the conditions to help them rise to meet those expectations.

But not just academically, socially as well, which falls under the category to me of leadership.

... to take charge and, and be a leader in?