Inspiring Action Through Your Leadership

This video by Simon Sinek got me thinking about the key concepts that he was espousing and how they apply to my leadership in Special Education.

Sinek is trying to convey to us is that we will be more successful if we know our WHY. Knowing our WHY is the driving force behind achieving long term buy-in from all stakeholders and achieving our goals.

His key concepts as gleaned from the video are as follows:
* People don’t buy what you do? People buy why you do it?
* What you do proves what you believe.
* If you talk about what you believe you will attract those that believe what you believe?
* It is those who start with why who have the ability to inspire those around them or find others who inspire them.

What does all of this mean in terms of my leadership in Special Education? I truly believe that all students can learn given the right conditions and programming. This belief needs to become a passionate rallying cry that will invoke the appropriate action on the part of all learning facilitators(teachers). Students must know at all times that we as educators care about them. ALWAYS! We cannot anticipate that they are going to be successful academically if they don’t feel that we care enough about them as individuals. We also need to acknowledge that students learn differently and that it behooves us to provide learning experiences that allows them to use their best style of learning. Regardless of their learning style and their learning needs, students have a yearning to be challenged according to their needs and to understand the relevance of what they are learning. We have to oblige them as educators so that they are excited to come back the next day to learn. In order to create the conditions so that all students can learn we need to consider and agree to the ideal learning conditions for all learners, we need to empower teachers, and we need to change our language as it pertains to special education(Bea McGarvey, 2015).

I recently read an article by Mea McGarvey(2015) entitled Creating a New Vision: Three “Re-Thinking” Breakthrough – https://education-reimagined.org/creating-new-vision-three-breakthroughs/. Her three breakthroughs for creating a new vision for education are as follows:
#1 – Start with the ideal learning environment – what is the ideal learning environment for all our students?
#2 – Empower Teachers – building the capacity of teachers should be an ongoing endeavour as the special education needs of our students are very diverse.
#3 – Change your language – what are we saying to our staff? Does our talk reveal our leadership bent for special education?