Mawi Asgedom's Blog, page 5

It’s a Lifestyle, Not a Program: Interview with Clayton Muhammad (Conference Sneak Peek!)

Meet Clayton Muhammad, one of our keynoters for our upcoming Summer Conference. In this interview with Mawi, Clayton shares how his city reduced homicides from 25 in 2003 to 0 in 2012. Clayton also describes how his innovative Boys II Men program achieves 100% graduation rates.

Hear more from Clayton at our Mawi Learning Summer Conference: The Power of Adults

Class Act: Interview with Jon Hallmark

If you’re looking for innovate ways to build character and leadership in your students, do not miss this interview with Jon Hallmark, Principal of Highland Middle School in Libertyville, IL. Among other things, you will be inspired by how Jon’s students are helping to build schools in Uganda.

The Power of Adult Education: Interview with David Adcock

Adult eduction is one of the fastest growing trends in the U.S. In this interview, we get to hear from David Adcock, the current Director of Urbana Adult Education and incoming President of the Illinois Association of Continuing Education.

Innovation and Design: Interview with Dr. Saeed Arida

This interview with Dr. Saeed Arida will amaze you, inspire you, and show you that our students have tremendous genius waiting to be unlocked.

Dr. Arida is the Founder and Chief Excitement Officer at NuVu Studio, a magnet innovation center for young minds. He received his PhD in architecture from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where his doctoral research examined the intricacies of the creative process to understand what creativity is and how an educational environment can nurture creative learning. The architectural studio pedagogy informed this research that eventually evolved into NuVu Studio where students learn in a hands-on environment with coaches who help students create projects and move through many, many iterations.

   Article about NuVu                                                              NuVu’s website

A sandwich maker! (left)

Roboflower: a robotic flower that reflects weather conditions by changing color and opening and closing. (right)

Samurai dress: A student’s design that made it to Boston Fashion week. (bottom)

 

The Two Journeys We All Go On

All of us go on two journeys in life.

The first journey is easier to see and describe.  This journey consists of things such as:

Places we have lived. For example, people who know my story know that I fled Ethiopia, lived in a refugee camp in Sudan, and came to the United States when I was almost seven.
Our professional life: Someone might say, I went to college at the University of Minnesota, studied electrical engineering, and now work for General Electric.
Key relationships: Someone might say, I had four brothers and one sister; when I was twenty-five, I got married and now have two wonderful children.

When most of us think of our life journeys, we generally think along the lines described above – what might be called the external journey. But each of us also goes on an internal journey that consists of things such as:

Our levels of confidence: Maybe you had low confidence in middle school, it rose in high school, plummeted again in college, and now is at an all-time high.
Moments of courage: Times when we should have given up, or when we should have been too scared to try something, but we went ahead and discovered that we had far more in us than we ever thought. There are also times when we should have given up, but we didn’t.
Love: We can look back and see when we received and gave tremendous love; when we extended forgiveness, and perhaps when we let hate get the best of us.

Leadership is the intersection between these two journeys, where we dynamically and proactively guide both the external and internal. Because the external journey is much sexier and easier to see than the internal, only those willing to spend time reflecting can truly lead.

How Summer Camps Build Character: Interview with Dan Weir

Many parents across the U.S. are finalizing plans right now for what summer camp their students will attend. I had a chance recently to speak to over 1,000 camp owners at the American Camp Association. Dan Weir runs one of the largest and most successful summer camps in the United States, Frost Valley YMCA (NY). He oversees 250 staff and 2,500 campers each year, and has a Masters Degree specializing in youth development and technology affecting youth. In this interview he shares his views on why camp matters and how camps build character and leadership in students.

Check out Dan’s blogs: Dan Loves Camp & Unplug at Camp!

Follow him at @danlovescamp

Listen to CampHacker Podcast

Heart not Brain: Interview with Josh Katz

In this interview with Josh Katz, a math teacher at Orange County Public Schools (FL), you will learn why heart matters more than brains when it comes to learning algebra.

Hardest Job in America

Imagine a job where:

You work 85 hours a week and you have a capped salary.
You have to hire, fire, manage, and mediate between 100 employees.
Your employees often have tremendous internal strife.
You are held accountable for results even though you have very significant constraints on how you can manage your employees.
You have thousands of customers that come in your facility every day for 8+ hours, and you are responsible for their safety and productivity. Some of your customers are erratic and prone to unpredictable behavior.
Some of your customers have very vocal advocates who fight aggressively to protect their customer’s interests. The advocates consistently pressure you to give their customer special consideration, regardless of your organization’s policies.
You have two sets of bosses: a board of directors and a management team. The board and management team consistently send directives your way and expect you to comply regardless of what your staff or customers think. You can be fired at any time if the board or management team shifts against you. There is constant turnover among the board and management team.
The board and management team is greatly influenced by a very active community, and if you do not keep the community happy, you will likely lose your job, and at the least have to answer angry phone calls on a daily basis.
You are expected to have high emotional intelligence, strong management skills, crisis management skills, and deep industry knowledge in a multitude of subjects.
Your budget has been cut by 25% over the last four years.

Welcome to being a school principal…

Open the Door of Opportunity

Here’s a 70-second video excerpt from a speech I gave at the Quest Conference last November in Ontario, Canada. In this video, I explain what it means to open the door of opportunity for a young person.

 

 

Educators’ Turn: Carol Hunter

With over 40 years of experience in education, Carol is now a Leadership Coach and Education Quality Consultant.  Her last school, Vincent Matthew Public School in Ottawa, was named one of the top schools in the country through Excellence Canada.  Carol is an expert in promoting educational change, and shares with us her thoughts on creating a value-focused environment, providing frameworks for action, and individualizing development for staff and students.

Carol’s consulting company: Impact Leadership

Carol’s book: Real Leadership, Real Change