By Vanessa Abrahams, CEI Intern
More often than not, urban schools achieve lower academic achievement rates than the national average. Urban educators are interested in improving their schools to avoid further punitive sanctions and see their reputations improve. Dr. Yvette Jackson, co-author of Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools through Fearless Leadership (2014), hones in on exactly what it means to motivate students to succeed. What makes students want to achieve is a combination of fearless leadership and personal desire.
Fearless leadership of educators and their willingness to do everything in their power to encourage students to succeed is one factor. When schools are over-burdened with administrative work and are underfunded, the only way to make it work is with the commitment of faculty and staff.
The student’s personal desire to achieve their academic potential. When students are led by educators who support them, relate to their personal struggles, and prove that students can come from all backgrounds and succeed, students are more convinced that they can succeed academically.
Leadership is crucial to a school’s success and without the commitment of the educators, faculty and staff; urban schools would sink further. Aim High is a transformational how-to guide and the title, an acronym standing for Affirmation, Inspiration, and Mediation (AIM). To show that urban schools can succeed, this text provides real world examples and tangible proof of the leadership skills necessary to make achievement more than a dream, but also a reality.