Perseverance and power of positive thinking
The Lake Charles Education Collaboration kicked off its John Maxwell Team Global Youth Initiative at Ralph Wilson Elementary on Thursday.
Founder of the Lake Charles Education Collaboration, Cedrick LaFleur, read Maxwell’s “Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn — For Kids” teaching leadership principles of perseverance and the power of positive thinking to third through fifth-grade students.
LaFleur said “Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn” was selected in order to teach children the principle of “failing forward.”
“The biggest challenge with little kids is not understanding failure or how to overcome defeat. If we can give them some tools to overcome, then they’ll learn that failure is not the end of the route, it’s just a new beginning.”
For maximum effect of the Global Youth Initiative, LaFleur encouraged parents to emphasize principles of failing forward at home as well.
“Instead of saying, ‘You did that wrong,’ we should say, ‘You did that wrong but let me show you a better way to do this.’ If the parents will help them change their mind set, then everything falls in line.”
The John Maxwell Team Global Youth Initiative is a month-long international community partnership designed to teach Maxwell’s well-known leadership principles to students. The Lake Charles Education Collaboration will visit six district elementary schools this month and will leave each library five copies of “Sometimes You Win, Sometimes You Learn — For Kids” to be checked out by students.
Calcasieu Parish School Board Superintendent Karl Bruchhaus said in a news release, “We are very happy that Cedrick LaFleur, an executive director with Calcasieu Parish roots, has offered to share his experiences with a number of our schools through these free events … Our students will surely benefit.”
The benefits of LaFleur’s presence could be seen immediately at Ralph Wilson as an exiting student asked Principal Rollan Moore how to play the fictional game “woggleball” as described in the book.
“It’s things like that which show the power of reading,” said Moore. Even for older children, being read to aloud “helps expand their mind and develop better reading fluency leading to better academic outcomes all around.”
‘If we can give them some tools to overcome, then they’ll learn that failure is not the end of the route, it’s just a new beginning.’
Cedrick LaFleur
Founder of the Lake Charles Education Collaboration
Cedrick Lafleur, founder of the Lake Charles Education Collaboration kicked off its John Maxwell Team Global Youth Initiative at Ralph Wilson Elementary on Thursday, October 11th.