By Katherine Berdy, LL ‘14, gcLi Scholar ‘18, Director of the C. Kyser Miree Ethical Leadership Center, Altamont School (AL)
I never thought it would happen to someone close to me. Murder. Such desperate evil resides far away, in circles distant from civilized society. Until it doesn’t.
The headlines read: “Christopher Kyser Miree begged for his life in Midtown Mobile shooting” and my heart was branded with the memories of that sweet boy, my former student: the sportsman, the big brother, the son, the class president, the scholar-athlete, the friend to all. Donations poured in and the Global and Cultural Center was renamed The C. Kyser Miree Ethical Leadership Center. Still, only time would allow meaningful work to hemstitch this kind of pain, and until that time, The Altamont School got busy learning how to build a leadership program bold enough to honor Kyser’s legacy.
Enter gcLi Leadership Lab.
I’d be lying if I said that I’ve always been confident in my ability to build a program worthy of Kyser’s memory. Before the redesign in 2014, our club and admin programs touched on individual leadership principles, but we lacked a cohesive way to talk about leadership. Collating these existing programs would be messy, so when our Head of School put the gcLi flier in my box, I immediately knew it could be the game-changer we needed.
I was excited to learn more about leadership pedagogy as well as see how another independent school – Fountain Valley – honored the tragic loss of a student. Since Altamont is a college preparatory school, the primary driver behind leadership initiatives seemed to be the all-important college resume. Thus, I arrived in Colorado Springs with a driving question: How could we redesign existing programs to create meaningful, authentic leadership initiatives for our small school?
Building Miree
For me, a prevailing take-away from gcLi was the importance of the developmental readiness for leadership, both social and psychological. Thus, the first move was to look at the best model that was already in place and developmentally appropriate. For us, that was the program we called Middle School LEAD. This program offers middle school students an opportunity to lead collaboratively in the Altamont community. Approximately 20 students organize assemblies and dances and develop creative solutions to middle school problems such as lunch room clean-up and bullying.
From there, we built a new upper school leadership program. We saw an opportunity to have students work according to individual passions in the greater Birmingham metropolitan area. The challenge was to create partnerships that align with each student’s individual interests and passions. It has taken four years to streamline the process, but I’m proud to say that we now have over 80 students leading in 80 unique ways in the Birmingham area. This is over approximately 45% of our upper school population engaging with a broad array of nonprofits across Birmingham.
The third step in our comprehensive student-centered approach to Miree Leadership was to look at our younger students in grades five through eight. We determined that they were able to engage in discussions and lessons about leading. Developmental challenges exist, but fun games and prizes allow us to measure individual students’ progress with their leadership development. For the 2018-2019 school year, we will also have an elective class for 5th and 6th graders to study their habits, time-management, and communication.
Lastly, because our leadership program is tailored to the individual, we looked at exposures we felt all 21st century students should have. The words ACTION-ORIENTED, AWARE, EMPATHETIC, and ACCEPTING continued to emerge, so under the Miree umbrella, we developed the sister programs of Global Initiatives, Service Corps, and Heritage Panel.
The Miree Model
The goal is for students to know who they are as unique individuals, what they value, and have the confidence to lead (or follow) accordingly. Through Miree, we now have a better way of explaining how we holistically think about leadership education. All programming is designed to enhance the student as a unique leader who interfaces with the community to make change and to understand his or her world. Each program is multi-layered and services different aspects of our school, but there is still a symbiotic relationship between all four.
Here’s a quick summary of The Miree Leadership Model:
- Miree Leadership is the flagship program that teaches action-based leadership principles through curricular and experiential initiative in 5th through 12th grades. Upper School students who complete the requirements of this program are eligible to earn the only added commendation on an Altamont diploma. (ACTION)
- Miree Global Initiatives exposes all students two global and cultural issues. Every year, we do a deep dive into a theme, this year being Health and Human Rights. Next year, the theme will be Human Footprint. The workshops, symposiums, and speakers we bring to campus create the awareness that we feel all well-educated 21st century leaders need. (AWARENESS)
- Miree Service Corps is the hub for all community service and service-learning initiates. Service days are often in conjunction with community leaders or other schools. All service-learning has an educational component designed to help students think beyond the self. (EMPATHY)
- Heritage Panel teaches tolerance and how to engage in meaningful but difficult dialogue. Student Heritage Panelists go through an intensive two-day training at the YWCA of Birmingham to learn how to facilitate difficult conversations about prejudice and injustice. Through student-led dialogue and personal stories of injustice, students learn how to celebrate difference rather than fear it. (ACCEPTANCE)
All Miree initiatives are designed to give students an opportunity to discover their own brand of authentic leadership through one or more of our programs. For example, Altamont 11th grader Amrita Lakhanpal began with a passion for technology and designed a project to teach coding and internet safety to underserved students. A few months into her project, she became aware of the limited access her students had to technology and began her action plan to raise money for new computers. Through a letter writing campaign to tech companies, Amrita raised over $30,000 and has purchased four laptop carts for two elementary schools. She also sponsors teacher training for schools who receive the laptops. Her initiative is called Screens for Schools, and it’s only the beginning of her leadership journey. Of her Miree experience, Amrita says, “[It] has laid the foundation for me becoming a leader. It has taught me how to show empathy, to value the differences in people, and most importantly, it has taught me to give myself for the benefit of others. My Miree project is only the beginning of my journey of giving back to the community.”
What’s next? I would like the Miree Approach to leadership to become a model for leadership pedagogy in Alabama. Right now, it’s catching on in a region where change comes slowly. I have seen that student-initiated change is much more effective than adult-driven initiatives. Students don’t have the long-held political or corporate motivations, so when they have the confidence to work for causes they are passionate about, everyone benefits.
The honor of assuming the role of Director of The Miree Center has been one of the greatest responsibilities of my life. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of Kyser, and his life’s work is the standard by which I measure students’ success. Without question, gcLi gave me the knowledge, language, and confidence to craft a program that embodies Kyser’s ethos and shapes our school and community. Thank you, gcLi, for your mission, message, and methodology.
Katherine Berdy is a 2014 graduate of the gcLi Leadership Lab and the Director of the C. Kyser Ethical Leadership Center at The Altamont School in Birmingham, AL, where she has the privilege of connecting students to area nonprofits and businesses for project placement and service learning. Her teaching portfolio includes classes in English, theater, creative writing, leadership, public speaking, and debate. Katherine holds a B.A. in Communication Studies from Vanderbilt University, and a M.Ed. in Secondary Language Arts from the University of Montevallo.