Something Small but Huge at the Same Time

Something Small but Huge at the same time.

This is Mikayla. She is small. She is 10 months old. She can't walk, stand, or crawl yet. She can't really talk to us either. Yet she can demonstrate leadership.

Huh? You ask...

There are HUGE lessons I learn everyday about leadership from being a dad. This is one of them.

See that little pink box in the picture? It has one button. When pushed it starts music and lights up the ceiling.

She decides when to push it.

She owns the room- when she hits the button- things happen.

(I didn't have cool stuff like this when I was a baby- we didn't get indoor playgrounds at McDonalds. But I digress.)

Mikayla chooses to push the button. Momma and Daddy are not setting up a plan- we don't tell her the windows of time to push the button. She chooses to- often we hear it in the middle of the night. Maybe she was scared and it soothed her? Maybe she was bored and it entertained her? We will never know. We love seeing her develop a sense of independence and ownership in her life... now its not like we are out of the picture.

Who bought that pink box? Who set it up? Who changes the batteries? Who set it in the crib in the first place?

Maybe leaders set the conditions and design the environments so that others grow? Can we replicate something about this scenario in our schools? What buttons have we designed for students to own?

Personalization promises to offer this for our students. I would love to hear a conference between a teacher and student where the student looks at the data, sets goals, and creates a pathway to reach those goals in the context of this supportive, warm, constructive teacher.

I can see those synapsis firing already. I can predict the exponential growth too.

Something small- but when we turn over some of our power as educators- it can be huge!