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Children's Mental Health Ontario
International Edubloggers Directory
The Learning Disabilities Association of Canada
Feb
16
Leadership Qualities Revisited
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Dealing With Stress, Special Education
Recently I wrote about leadership qualities here . At the time, I was responding to a challenge to identify the leadership qualities that I had that others may not have known about. I thought for a while and came up with a list of qualities informed by my “unique” sense of humour. Today, thanks to Doug Turner, I found a quality I had but didn’t think of it in terms of a leadership quality. Doug answered a question that I didn’t even ask: what leadership quality do you have that you are not aware of having? I found out it’s the quality of focusing on the positive. It’s true. It’s really almost a fault of mine. I get teased about it.
Doug says he’s noticed
…that the leaders who continue to languish are still focused on the negative while the leaders who are flourishing – and happy - leverage the positive and keep the negative in perspective.
It makes sense to me when I think about it. I ‘ve been teaching at- risk kids with and without behaviour issues for over twenty years. I have chosen to do that. How have I been able to do thids for so long? I have chosen to focus on their their strengths and not their weaknesses. I’m forever telling them not to define themselves by their weaknesses. I help them discover their strengths and show them how they can choose to use these strengths to be successful.
Today after work, a group of us were talking about the troubled, troublesome and troubling kids we have in our classes that make our classes so difficult to teach. I told them that I choose to look at these kids in a positive light. They’re just kids. They have much to learn about themselves and how to negotiate their way through life more successfully. I have seen enough kids turn their lives around to keep me focusing on the positive. My glass is definately more than half full.
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