In the past couple of months, I have been honored to read many amazing books. This books have inspired me to reach beyond my expectations, see myself as a leader, challenge myself and empower myself in new and unexpected ways. Each day, I spend 10-15 minutes reading a book that helps me grow, learn new things, and level myself up. One of those books was Darrin Peppard's Road to Awesome.
As I described in my 1/15/2021: Connection on the Road to Awesome, Darrin shared how he used six game changers for empowering his community ( students and staffculty). I loved his emphasis on connection as he shared ways to lead his school community to the Road to Awesome. As he did this, he focused on all the awesomeness that exists in his district.
Messages like Darrin's need to be shared in the educational community, but change does not just begin with the adults. We need to model taking risks, building connections and ways to lead even to our youngest students. Messages like that can inspire all of us and we need to expose our students to them, especially during times like our current times when much of the focus is on the gap, rather than the ways students have grown in their resilience.
Our students are our future leaders. We know that and spend a lot of time with our students emphasizing the importance of a growth mindset. But we also need to empower our students to take risks, build connections, and help them discover the ways that they can lead. We need to give them challenges that are open ended enough that they can add themselves into them. We need to give students not only an opportunity to share their story, but to craft and develop their personal journeys. Doing all of that can be a daunting task, but it doesn't have to be. Jillian DuBois and Darrin Peppard have written a powerful new children's book that reveals such opportunities to us and gives us language to share these ideas with our youngest learners.
I truly love this book. It is a book that you can read over and over again. Even as an adult, I gain something new each time I read it. Its magic is truly in its simplicity. Every day, our students are on their own personal journeys- they make decisions every day that impact these stories, But, do we, as educators, spend enough time giving them the tools and the permission to go down the path to their own Road to Awesome. Do we acknowledge that it is okay to be afraid, but to just take that first step? Do we remind that their journey is different from everyone else's and not to fall in the comparison trap? Do we share that their bumps along the way will help them learn? If your answer like mine was, yes but not enough- then this book is a beautiful starting point for this work.
With so many amazing resources out there for our students, it can be difficult to not only find but add new resources to our already large repertoire. But like Blake, the main character of Road to Awesome- A Journey for Kids , take a chance and use this book to take you and your students down their own personal Road to Awesome. Inspire and empower your students in new ways. Focus on the awesomeness in your classroom. Trust in your journey as an educator to impact and guide your students. You won't regret it.
I am so proud of my fellow Road to Awesome authors, Jillian and Darrin for sharing this book with the world. Congratulations and what an awesome way to get Road to Awesome LLC in the publishing world.
Remember, if you want to attend the Code Breakers Power Summit for FREE, I have three free passes that I will share. Just tag me on Twitter and share at least one way you will learn and grow this month. I will select the winners out of the posts made by April 14th.