Summer Assignment
Contemporary Studies
Ms. N. Van Ess – n.vaness@hackensackschools.org
June 2008 – Due Date: Friday September 5, 2008.
Objectives: To think about leadership in today’s society
To read various quotes about leadership to shape your opinion
To write a “stream of consciousness” piece on your view of leadership
Focus: Contemporary Studies explores how we affect the world and how the world affects us. We will use different themes such as democracy, race, and gender to understand how we are a part of today’s society. Our role in the creation of our reality is crucial in the understanding of today’s world. If we do not act as leaders in our schools, communities, nation and world we cannot expect to foster improvement. We will start our journey by examining leadership, and what type of leaders we will be in the creation of our own lives, our own communities as well as our nation and world.
Tasks:
25 points
Write a paragraph defining leadership. This should be an informal piece --- get down on paper what you think before you read anything or speak to anyone.
25 points
Textnoting is --- Making notes in the margins, underlining important ideas in quotes, highlighting what you agree with, what you disagree with and what intrigues you. If you make connections to someone in your life, or someone you have studied, or seen on television, write it down, and explain the connection. Essentially textnoting is having a conversation with what you are reading and with yourself in words on a page.
50 points
Write one to three pages on your view of leadership after reading the quotes. You should think about the following questions when writing:
· Did my initial definition of leadership change? Why or why not?
· Who are the leaders around me?
· What qualities do these leaders possess?
· Does the context of the place change the leader? (school, home, work, government)
· How are you a leader?
This writing is also an informal piece. No pressure. I am not looking for a right answer. I want you to explore the idea of leadership. This conversation will start our year, and we will most likely return to it again and again throughout our experience together. =)
Please type: Times New Roman, 12 point font, double spaced, one inch margins, number pages, formal heading, stapled. Due Date: Friday September 5, 2008.
“Quotes on Leadership”
Adapted from: Bennis, Warren. On Becoming a Leader. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 1994.
Quote 1: John W. Gardner, No Easy Victories
Leaders have a significant role in creating the state of mind that is the society. They can serve as symbols of the moral unity of the society. They can express the values that hold the society together. Most important, they can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts.
Quote 2: William James, Letters of William James
I have often thought that the best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensively active and alive. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says, "This is the real me."
Quote 3: Charles Dickens, Pickwick Papers
"I took a good deal o' pains with his education, sir; let him run the streets when he was very young, and shift for his-self. It's the only way to make a boy sharp, sir."
Quote 4: Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi
Two things seemed pretty apparent to me. One was, that in order to be a [ Mississippi River] pilot a man had got to learn more than any one man ought to be allowed to know; and the other was, that he must learn it all over again in a different way every 24 hours.
Quote 5: Abraham Maslow, Farther Reaches of Human Nature
There is a self, and what I have sometimes referred to as "listening to the impulse voices" means letting the self emerge. Most of us, most of the time (and especially does this apply to children, young people), listen not to ourselves but to Mommy's introjected voice or Daddy's voice or to the voice of the Establishment, of the Elders, of authority, or of tradition.
Quote 6: Kurt Lewin
If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.
Quote 7: William Shakespeare, The Life of King Henry V
Once more
unto the breach, dear friends, once more . . .Follow your spirit, and upon this
charge
Cry "God for Harry, England, and Saint George!"
Quote 8: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
I am tempted to believe that what we call necessary institutions are no more than institutions to which we have become accustomed. In matters of social constitution, the field of possibilities is much more extensive than men living in their various societies are ready to imagine.
Quote 9: Eric Hoffer, quoted in Vanguard Management
In a time of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.
Quote 10: Elizabeth Dole
What you always do before you make a decision is consult. The best public policy is made when you are listening to people who are going to be impacted. Then, once policy is determined, you call on them to help you sell it.
Quote 11: Susan B. Anthony
Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation and social standing, never can bring about a reform. Those who are really in earnest must be willing to be anything or nothing in the world's estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathy with despised and persecuted ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
Quote 12: Vince Lombardi
Leaders aren't born they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that's the price we'll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.