Developing Leaders Through Service

An Idealist’s Journey Experiential SessionDr. Max Klau

Director of Leadership Development, City Year2011 Symposium on Inclusion and Service

Friday, December 9th 2011

Goals

1) Understand the Flame of Idealism 2) Understand the Purpose of the Idealist’s

Journey Leadership Development Curriculum

3) Experience an IJ Reflection Exercise4) Experience the Presentation

Development Process

By the end of this session, you will:

Warm-Up

Reflection Question:

How is your presence here at this session connected to your life’s

purpose?

“Give a Year. Change the World.”

Change the Inner World

Leadership Development

Change the Outer

World

Service

Changing the Outer World:Addressing the Nation’s Dropout Crisis

Every 26 secondsA student drops out of school

"When more than 1 million students a year drop out of high school, it's more than a problem, it's a catastrophe."

- Gen. Colin Powell (Ret), Founding Chair, America’s Promise Alliance

• Young people of color are most affected – Nearly half of all African-American and Native-American

students will not graduate with their class; less than six in 10 Hispanic students will.

• Dropouts are less likely to be productive members of society – High School dropouts are three times more likely than

college graduates to be unemployed and eight times more likely to be in jail or prison than high school graduates.

– Over a lifetime, individuals with a high school diploma earn two times that of a high school drop out.

• The economic impact to society is high – The more than 12 million students projected to drop out

over the next decade will cost the nation about three trillion dollars.

The Crisis is Solvable

Source: Robert Balfanz and Liza Herzog, Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. “Unfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of Philadelphia’s Dropout Crisis , 2000-2005,” Ruth Curran Neild, Ph.D and Robert Balfanz, Ph.D

Fact: A relatively small number of corps members deployed strategically could make a disproportionate impact on the

problem.

The Problem is

Concentrated

Likely Dropouts Can be Identified

There are three off-track indicators that can identify likely dropouts as early as 6th grade: • Poor Attendance,• Disruptive Behavior, • Course Failure in Math/English

50% of the country’s dropouts come from only 12% of the high schools

WSWC Prototype Sites:Decreasing the presence of off-track

indicators

• Half of students who were identified as being off-track at the beginning of the 2008-09 school year improved in that indicator

• 4500 additional instructional hours were gained through reduced suspensions.

10

20

30

40

50

J une 2008 J une 20090

50

100

150

200

250

300

J une 2008 J une 2009

52% Reduction

45% Reduction

80% Reduction

83% Reduction

Course PerformanceBehaviorAttendance

# o

f O

ff-T

rack

Stu

den

ts

# of Students with less than 80% Attendance

# of Students with 3 or more negative behavior marks

# of Students receiving an F in Math or English

Literacy

Math

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

June 2008 June 2009

Source: Philadelphia Education Fund Pilot Data on Attendance, Suspension and Math/Reading (Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences)

Beyond Both/And

City Year has always been focused on BOTH Service AND Leadership Development;

We have recently achieveda breakthrough understanding of how these two dimensions of City Year work together…

Service

Leadership Development

The Flame of Idealism

DO: Civic Action

Whole School, Whole Child

HeroesCivic Engagement

KNOW: Civic Capacity

TrainingCoaching

Self-Directed Learning

Performance Management

BE: Civic Identity

The Idealist’s Journey

(Personal and Small Group Reflection)

Culture Uniforms, PITWs,

Founding Stories, Team-Based, & More!

ValuesService to a Cause Greater than

Self; Students First, Collaboration Always; Belief in the Power of Young People; Social Justice for All; Level

Five Leadership; Empathy; Inclusivity; Ubuntu; Teamwork;

Excellence

Together, these promote Idealism &

Big Citizenship!

The Flame of Idealism

Clarity + Integration = Power

Service

Whole School, Whole Child

Leadership

Development

The Flame of Idealism

What is the Idealist’s Journey

The IJ is our deliberate, intentional effort to develop your Civic

Identity.

It provides regular opportunities for you to engage in two types of reflection:

Personal: What is your purpose? What does your City Year mean to you?

Practice: What challenges do you face in your service? How can you learn from those challenges?

The Power of the Journey

The Journey invites us to view our year of service as a mythic, heroic journey of

personal transformation.

It illuminates the inner work of this civic rite of passage.

It has three stages:

Departure Road of Trials Return

Stages of the Idealist’s Journey

The Inner Work of Leadership Development:

Crafting a Personal Leadership Mission Statement

Mission Statement Guidelines

Personal Leadership Mission Statement

• It should begin with the phrase, “As a leader, I….”• In its final form, it should be no more than 1-3 sentences long• It should represent a vision that you could not possible

complete or achieve; this is a mission you will always be working towards, but never arriving at

• Similarly, it should not include specific tasks, or quantifiable goals (“As a leader I teach three classes a day”).

• Finally, your mission statement should be larger than your involvement with City Year. We invite you to connect with a sense of purpose that goes beyond the particular professional role you will play this year.

Debrief

How does it feel to write your own Personal Leadership Mission

Statement?

The PresentationDevelopment

Process:

The Challenge

You service experience is incredibly complex:

KidsPeersStaffTeachers

PoliciesPersonal HistoryFriendsFamilyContent Knowled

ge!?!Within that complexity, what

question or challenge gives you the

greatest leverage to have an impact?

IJ Critical Reflection Cycle

Aligning Beliefs

and Actions

PowerfulPresenting

Active ListeningCritical

Thinking

Selecting

Key Leadership

Lessons

Problem Finding

Prior to IJ Session

During IJ Session

After IJ Session

The PDP

A deliberate, structured process intended to help you find the right

problems amidst the noise and complexity of your service experience.

Process Background

This process is based on 20 years of action research conducted by an

organization called The Right Question Project!

It’s a proven method for empowering citizens to find their own voice and

advocate for themselves!

The Context

At each IJ Session, a corps member will present a question or challenge to their IJ group.

Each Presenter is therefore faced with an important question:

What is the Right Presentation for me to

bring to my group?

Why it Matters for the Presenter

The right presentation can generate insights and support that improve your service and develop you as a

leader.

The wrong presentation will fail on both fronts.

Why it Matters for the IJ Group

The right presentation will keep the group engaged, energized, and focused.

The wrong presentation will leave the group bored, disengaged, or confused.

The quality of the group learning hinges

on the quality of the presentation!

Qualities of a Good Presentation

• Clear• Concise• Compelling

A good presentation is:

The Presentation Development Process

The five steps are as follows:1) Create a Trigger

Statement2) Brainstorm Related

Questions3) Improve the Questions4) Pick the Best Question5) Craft the Presentation

Step 1: Trigger Statement

A trigger statement is a simple, declarative sentence (NOT a question) that captures the essence of an issue that is compelling to the corps member and needs to be explored.

Here are some examples:

           “A CM on my team is disengaged.” “CMs at Smith Elementary feel disrespected by teachers.”       “Our last parent engagement night was huge success.”

            “National service is not yet a civic right of passage.”

More About Triggers

Triggers can be:-Directly related to service

“Only 10 kids showed up for afterschool”

-Abstract and conceptual “Too many people are cynical”

-A Current Event “My district’s budget was just cut”-Positive instead of negative

“My students all made amazing progress last semester.”

More About Triggers

A good trigger will “get you in

the gut”.

If it doesn’t, you don’t really care about the issue, and the discussion

will mirror your own disengagement with the issue you present.

Step 2: Brainstorm

For four minutes, brainstorm as many questions related to the trigger as possible!

The rules for this section are as follows:       -Ask as many questions as you can in the time

allotted.-Do not stop to answer or discuss any questions.

-This can be done alone or with others.-As a general rule, you should generate at least 10 questions.

Step 3: Improve the Questions

-If you’ve created any statements, change them into questions.-Change any close-ended (“yes or no”) questions to open-ended questions.

Here’s an example of how to improve a question: -Is Amanda happy with the quality of service on her team?

becomes-How does Amanda feel about the quality of service on her team?

Step 4: Pick the Best Question

Start by selecting the three most personally compelling questions from the list

From those three, pick the one question that most clearly gets you in the gut.

This will be the question that you use for your presentation!   

Step 5: Craft the Presentation

Create a brief (2-4 sentence), powerful introduction for the

presentation. Make it clear, concise, and compelling!

Start with your trigger statement followed by your best question; then decide if you need another sentence or two to provide a bit more context.

        

Crafting the Presentation (cont)

Here are some examples:

         “John, a CM on my team, is disengaged and not delivering powerful service.  My challenge is that I don’t understand why he feels disengaged. How do I address that challenge?”

          “Obama just signed the Serve America Act.  How will that affect national service in general, and City Year in particular?”

         “Is City Year a service program or a leadership development program?”

PRACTICE SESSION

The five steps are as follows:1) Create a Trigger

Statement2) Brainstorm Related

Questions3) Improve the Questions4) Pick the Best Question5) Craft the Presentation

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

- Gandhi