Building Grit, Resilience, and Ownership: Inside Our Leader in Me Journey
Building Grit, Resilience, and Ownership: Inside Our Leader in Me Journey
By: Sunrise & Horizon Middle School Leadership Teams
In a recent district presentation at Administrators Days in Kearney, former Sunrise Middle School principal Mark Johnson, Sunrise school counselor Chelsie Palu, and Horizon school counselor Roan Howard reflected on our district’s implementation of the Leader in Me framework. The LiM initiative directly addresses common struggles facing educators and middle schoolers today, including social-emotional challenges, screen overreliance, feelings of disconnectedness, and a tendency for students to give up when faced with difficult tasks.
Rather than relying on adult rescue, the primary goal of Leader in Me is to build self-confidence and problem-solving skills so students can approach academic and social obstacles with a "bring it on, I can solve this" mindset.
At the core of the framework are Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:
Habits 1–3 focus on developing student independence.
Habits 4–6 emphasize interdependence and teamwork.
Habit 7 centers on continuous renewal and personal growth.
Through the See-Do-Get model, staff members act as mentors and model daily leadership behaviors. This creates a paradigm shift moving our school culture from "my classroom" to "our classroom". Students learn to distinguish between what is in their control, such as their own reactions and attitudes, and what is not, encouraging proactive problem-solving across all schools.
Dr. Jason Mundorf, Superintendent of Kearney Public Schools attended the presentation and noted, “It was incredibly impressive to watch and listen to Roan, Chelsea, and Mark describe the implementation of the “Leader in Me” program at our middle schools last year. The connection the students made with the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, not to mention the increase in student engagement, leadership, and practice of those habits was clearly the type of success we want to achieve with the program. Building grit and resilience in our students will be critical to their success both in future school endeavors and their life as a whole”.
When given authentic responsibility, middle school students excel. Across Sunrise and Horizon, students are stepping into active leadership roles:
Student-Led Clubs: Clubs such as chess, art, esports, fishing, D&D, improv, and horse club are being co-led or actively recruited by students.
Events like Blitz Day, an academic celebration tied to homework goals, have transitioned from being staff-planned to entirely student-organized, with adults stepping back to observe.
Voice & Media: Students are taking charge of daily announcements, teaching literacy activities, and transitioning school podcasts from adult-led to student-led interviews.
We look forward to continuing this journey together as we nurture independent, resilient, and empowered leaders across all of our elementary schools and both of our middle schools!