Love for LEAP
“LEAP learners must navigate across two worlds,” observes Marguerite Callaway, founder and President of The Callaway Leadership Institute. “One bordering on chaos in so many ways…and another one that sets up optimal conditions to allow their inherent capabilities intellectual capabilities to be ignited and cultivated”. Callaway says LEAP is developing and supporting students who can be “positive deviants in their own communities”. This is what she believes is the power of the LEAP model…
LEAP helps students discover what it means to have self-respect and respect for others. They learn emotional intelligence, creativity, love of learning, commitment to one another, the value of collaboration and cooperation. This is what I experienced first-hand, not just in one school but in all your schools. Remember I am a social scientist first and foremost – and consequently a very good observer!
You do not remove them entirely from their own context, but require them to learn how to work between them. I am convinced this is the only way South Africa and other countries with large under-developed and poor populations can evolve peacefully in a way in which more people benefit from such development (human and otherwise). I know this to be true from my own experience teaching in South Africa and many other African countries.
You work on a ‘shoe-string’ budget – using the time honored tools that real educators have used ever since man started learning. (Yes, computers and the internet are useful tools), but the development of a human’s capacity to think is much more fundamental. LEAP schools are an oasis, just down the street or around the corner, but not a foreign planet. You keep the learners grounded in the reality that resources must be earned and used carefully, not taken for granted.
