What does it mean to lead a school with “leadership” in its name? Lori Colbert, co-principal of the Barack Obama School of Leadership & STEM outside Chicago, says it’s all about giving her fourth- and fifth-graders opportunities to practice future-focused leadership skills throughout the school day.
“Every morning we spend the first 25 minutes in homeroom learning about leadership—what it is and what it looks like for 9- to 11-year-olds,” says Colbert, whose grade 4 and 5 school is part of the Park Forest-Chicago Heights School District 163.
“If we have a community event, we have our student leaders be tour guides” adds Colbert, who was named a regional elementary school principal of the year. “We give them opportunities to help out after school and on weekends, and we have a broadcast studio that is student-led.”
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Colbert embraces one of the leadership roles she calls one of her most important as principal—an instructional chief of her teaching faculty. One of her key strategies is setting weekly goals as she meets with fifth-grade teaching teams in their professional learning communities. During those meetings, she and the teachers dive into learning data, and Colbert follows up with formal and informal classroom observations as well as conversations with students.
The team then reviews their progress toward the weekly goal in the following meeting. This informs the additional resources and PD teachers will receive. “We are not where we want to be or need to be when we look at state testing,” she points out. “We have to make sure we have a solid plan to get there.”
Being an instructional leader is a key part of building a positive school culture, which jibes with her other roles of being an innovator and helping everyone have fun. “If I don’t have a good culture in my building, I don’t know if anything good is going to happen,” she explains. “We coined a phrase a few years ago as a district admin team: ‘We want our schools to be such that students are literally running to get into the school, instead of running to get out at the end of the day.'”
The Barack Obama School of Leadership & STEM is considered by the district to be an innovation school. It features a STEM lab and a full greenhouse along with programs in horticulture, communications and art. “I love being a leader but I don’t do it by myself,” Colbert concludes. “I tell my staff every year that I am one person—I don’t have all the answers but together we do. I rely on staff to help create the vision they want for their school.”
