Developing Leaders
Through Service
An Idealist’s Journey Experiential Session
Dr. Max Klau
Director of Leadership Development, City Year
2011 Symposium on Inclusion and Service
Friday, December 9th 2011
Goals
By the end of this session, you will:
1) Understand the Flame of Idealism
2) Understand the Purpose of the Idealist’s
Journey Leadership Development Curriculum
3) Experience an IJ Reflection Exercise
4) Experience the Presentation Development
Process
Warm-Up
Reflection Question:
How is your presence here at this session
connected to your life’s purpose?
“Give a Year. Change the World.”
Change the
Outer World
Service
Change the
Inner World
Leadership
Development
Changing the Outer World:
Addressing the Nation’s Dropout Crisis
Every 26 seconds
A student drops out of school
• Young people of color are most affected
– Nearly half of all African-American and Native-American students will not
graduate with their class; less than six in 10 Hispanic students will.
• Dropouts are less likely to be productive members of society
"When more than
– High School dropouts are three times more likely than college graduates
1 million students
to be unemployed and eight times more likely to be in jail or prison than
a year drop out of
high school graduates.
high school, it's
– Over a lifetime, individuals with a high school diploma earn two times that
more than a
of a high school drop out.
problem, it's a
catastrophe."
• The economic impact to society is high
- Gen. Colin Powell (Ret),
Founding Chair, America’s
Promise Alliance
– The more than 12 million students projected to drop out over the next
decade will cost the nation about three trillion dollars.
The Crisis is Solvable
The Problem is
Concentrated
Likely Dropouts
Can be Identified
50% of the country’s dropouts come
from only 12% of the high schools
There are three off-track indicators that can
identify likely dropouts as early as 6th grade:
• Poor Attendance,
• Disruptive Behavior,
• Course Failure in Math/English
Fact: A relatively small number of corps
members deployed strategically could make a
disproportionate impact on the problem.
Source: Robert Balfanz and Liza Herzog, Center for Social Organization of Schools at Johns Hopkins University. “Unfilled Promise: The Dimensions and Characteristics of
Philadelphia’s Dropout Crisis , 2000-2005,” Ruth Curran Neild, Ph.D and Robert Balfanz, Ph.D
WSWC Prototype Sites:
Decreasing the presence of off-track indicators
• Half of students who were identified as being off-track at the beginning of the
2008-09 school year improved in that indicator
• 4500 additional instructional hours were gained through reduced suspensions.
Attendance
# of Off-Track Students
# of Students with less
than 80% Attendance
50
Behavior
# of Students with 3 or more
negative behavior marks
300
52%
40
Reduction
30
250
45%
200
Reduction
150
50
10
0
June 2008
June 2009
# of Students receiving an F
in Math or English
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
100
20
Course Performance
June 2008
Source: Philadelphia Education Fund Pilot Data on Attendance, Suspension and Math/Reading (Feltonville School of Arts and Sciences)
June 2009
Math
83%
Literacy
Reduction
80%
Reduction
June 2008
June 2009
Beyond Both/And
City Year has always been
focused on BOTH Service
AND Leadership
Development;
We have recently achieved
a breakthrough understanding
of how these two dimensions
of City Year work together…
Service
Leadership
Development
The Flame of Idealism
Culture
Uniforms,
PITWs,
Founding
DO:
BE: Civic
Action
KNOW:
Civic Identity
Capacity
Stories, Team-Based, & More!
Training
The Idealist’s Journey
Values
Coaching
Whole
School,
Whole
Child
Service
to
a
Cause
Greater
than
Self;
Students
Self-Directed
Learning
(PersonalHeroes
and Small
First, Collaboration
Always;
Belief inGroup
the Power
Management
of Performance
YoungCivic
People;
Social
Justice for All; Level
Reflection)
Engagement
Five Leadership; Empathy; Inclusivity; Ubuntu;
Teamwork; Excellence
Together, these promote
Idealism & Big Citizenship!
The Flame of Idealism
Civic Action
Service
Civic Capacity
Training/ Coaching
Self-Directed Learning
Performance Management
Civic Identity
The Idealist’s Journey
Idealism &
Big Citizenship
Culture:
Uniforms, PITWs, Founding Stories,
Team-Based, & more!
Values:
Service to a Cause Greater than Self;
Students First, Collaboration Always;
Belief in the Power of Young People;
Social Justice for All; Level Five
Leadership; Empathy; Inclusivity;
Ubuntu; Teamwork; Excellence
Clarity + Integration = Power
Service
Whole School,
Whole Child
Leadership
Development
The Flame of
Idealism
What is the Idealist’s Journey
The IJ is our deliberate, intentional effort to
develop your Civic Identity.
It provides regular opportunities for you to
engage in two types of reflection:
Personal: What is your purpose? What does your
City Year mean to you?
Practice: What challenges do you face in your
service? How can you learn from those challenges?
The Power of the Journey
The Journey invites us to view our year of service
as a mythic, heroic journey of personal
transformation.
It illuminates the inner work of this civic rite of
passage.
It has three stages:
Stages of the Idealist’s Journey
Departure
Road of Trials
Return
The Inner Work of Leadership
Development:
Crafting a Personal
Leadership Mission Statement
Mission Statement Guidelines
Personal Leadership Mission Statement
• It should begin with the phrase, “As a leader, I….”
• In its final form, it should be no more than 1-3 sentences long
• It should represent a vision that you could not possible complete or achieve;
this is a mission you will always be working towards, but never arriving at
• Similarly, it should not include specific tasks, or quantifiable goals (“As a
leader I teach three classes a day”).
• Finally, your mission statement should be larger than your involvement with
City Year. We invite you to connect with a sense of purpose that goes
beyond the particular professional role you will play this year.
Debrief
How does it feel to write your own Personal
Leadership Mission Statement?
The Presentation
Development
Process:
The Challenge
You service experience is
incredibly complex:
Within that complexity,
what question or challenge
gives you the greatest
leverage to have an impact?
!?!
Personal
Content
Teachers
Staff
Friends
Policies
Kids
Family
Peers
History
Knowledge
IJ Critical Reflection Cycle
Prior to IJ
Session
After IJ Session
Aligning
Beliefs
and Actions
Problem
Finding
Powerful
Presenting
Selecting
Key
Leadership
Lessons
Critical
Thinking
Active
Listening
During IJ
Session
The PDP
A deliberate, structured process intended to help
you find the right problems amidst the noise
and complexity of your service experience.
Process Background
This process is based on 20 years of action
research conducted by an organization called
The Right Question Project!
It’s a proven method for empowering citizens to
find their own voice and advocate for
themselves!
The Context
At each IJ Session, a corps member will present a question
or challenge to their IJ group.
Each Presenter is therefore faced with an important
question:
What is the Right Presentation
for me to bring to my group?
Why it Matters for the Presenter
The right presentation can generate insights and
support that improve your service and develop
you as a leader.
The wrong presentation will fail on both fronts.
Why it Matters for the IJ Group
The right
presentation will keep the group engaged,
The wrong
energized, and focused.
presentation will leave the group bored,
disengaged, or confused.
The quality of the group learning hinges
on the quality of the presentation!
Qualities of a Good Presentation
A good presentation is:
• Clear
• Concise
• Compelling
The Presentation Development
Process
The five steps are as follows:
1) Create a Trigger Statement
2) Brainstorm Related Questions
3) Improve the Questions
4) Pick the Best Question
5) Craft the Presentation
Step 1: Trigger Statement
A trigger statement is a simple, declarative sentence (NOT a
question) that captures the essence of an issue that is compelling
to the corps member and needs to be explored.
Here are some examples:
“A CM on my team is disengaged.”
“CMs at Smith Elementary feel disrespected by teachers.”
“Our last parent engagement night was huge success.”
“National service is not yet a civic right of passage.”
More About Triggers
Triggers can be:
-Directly related to service
“Only 10 kids showed up for afterschool”
-Abstract and conceptual
“Too many people are cynical”
-A Current Event
“My district’s budget was just cut”
-Positive instead of negative
“My students all made amazing progress last semester.”
More About Triggers
A good trigger will “get you in the gut”.
If it doesn’t, you don’t really care about the issue, and the
discussion will mirror your own disengagement with the
issue you present.
Step 2: Brainstorm
For four minutes, brainstorm as many questions
related to the trigger as possible!
The rules for this section are as follows:
-Ask as many questions as you can in the time allotted.
-Do not stop to answer or discuss any questions.
-This can be done alone or with others.
-As a general rule, you should generate at least 10
questions.
Step 3: Improve the Questions
-If you’ve created any statements, change them into
questions.
-Change any close-ended (“yes or no”) questions to openended questions.
Here’s an example of how to improve a question:
-Is Amanda happy with the quality of service on her team?
becomes
-How does Amanda feel about the quality of service on her team?
Step 4: Pick the Best Question
Start by selecting the three most personally compelling
questions from the list
From those three, pick the one question that most clearly
gets you in the gut.
This will be the question that you use for your
presentation!
Step 5: Craft the Presentation
Create a brief (2-4 sentence),
powerful introduction for the presentation.
Make it clear, concise, and compelling!
Start with your trigger statement followed by
your best question; then decide if you need
another sentence or two to provide a bit
more context.
Crafting the Presentation (cont)
Here are some examples:
“John, a CM on my team, is disengaged and not delivering
powerful service. My challenge is that I don’t understand why
he feels disengaged. How do I address that challenge?”
“Obama just signed the Serve America Act. How will that
affect national service in general, and City Year in particular?”
“Is City Year a service program or a leadership development
program?”
PRACTICE SESSION
The five steps are as follows:
1) Create a Trigger Statement
2) Brainstorm Related Questions
3) Improve the Questions
4) Pick the Best Question
5) Craft the Presentation
You must be the change you wish to see
in the world.
- Gandhi