Gower West fourth-grader Adolph Galinski put it simply, but powerfully at the close of a Gower West program on superheroes.
“We are brave. We are courageous. We can change the world today,” Galinski said to a multipurpose room full of classmates, teachers and a special guest.
Flip Flippen, founder of The Flippen Group, a professional development organization, as well as the Capturing Kids’ Hearts program for schools, agreed. He was taken aback by the poise, confidence and character shown by Gower West students during his visit to the Willowbrook school last week.
“I’m walking into first, second, third, fourth grade and everybody comes up, introduces themselves, welcomes me, shakes my hand,” Flippen said. “Where do you see that?”
Flippen, whose Capturing Kids’ Hearts program is in 7,500 schools, aiming to help teachers transform problem classrooms into environments of engaged learning, was at Gower West on Friday to celebrate the school being one of 11 National Showcase Schools for the program.
He said the honor bestowed on Gower West was not based on test scores but on what students say about the learning institution and what learning experiences they have. Flippen said by building the right structure, the academic scores follow.
“We focus too much on tests and scores and not enough on process,” Flippen said.
Flippen, whose firm does corporate organizational development for companies such as Delta Airlines and player development for organizations like the New York Yankees, said he started the Capturing Kids’ Hearts program after doing work with youths involved in gangs and other at-risk kids.
“The two things we saw were their values were out of whack and on the socio-emotional side they had no basic skills,” Flippen said. “They had no basic skills on how to interact with adults.”
“Basically, if you have a child’s heart, you have his head,” Flippen said. “IInstead of walking in and going straight to the content, you walk in and go straight to the child; you go straight to the person. You start your class at the door with smiles and happy faces and handshakes.
Flippensaid this gives students the sense that they are important, but also gives them some basic buisness skills.
Gower West principal Gina Rodewald was thrilled that the school earned the National Showcase honor from Capturing Kids’ Heart in just its fourth year in the program.
“I think it speaks to what great staff members we have,” Rodewald said, “and just how much we care about kids. It makes us feel like we might be doing things right.”
Rodewald said test scores are important, but not at the expense of youths’ social development.
“First, you have to take care of the social-emotional piece,” Rodewald said. “This process has just allowed us to address those skills and really just make sure that we have great kids, balanced, healthy kids.”
Kevin Beese is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press
