Francine Lazarus, the Assistant Principal at Muller Elementary Magnet School in Tampa, Florida, has spearheaded the first school initiative I am aware of to adopt the “Johnny the Bagger®” philosophy in a school system. “Service from the Heart” is their theme for the 2010 – 1011 school year.
They are going to focus on 6 core tenets of service, both internal and external:
• Service to Students
• Service to the District
• Service to Parents
• Service to the Community
• Service to Colleagues
• Service to Yourself
They plan to educate students on the service concept as well, and they will be rewarded when they display positive service behaviors.
This is the email Francine sent to me about specific things they are doing:
Hi Barbara,
We’re thrilled that you are excited about our “Johnny” initiative at school! We’ve started planning,g and the ideas keep coming…We plan to kick things off when the teachers return for the year on August 16th. The room will be decorated with pictures of shopping bags and quotes from the Simple Truths book. My principal and I plan to wear Publix aprons and have breakfast brought in for the staff.
We’re going to show the Johnny movie and then give teachers a gift of a reusable grocery bag with our school name on it. Your book will be inside the bags so they can share the message with their students. Teachers will then break up into small groups to brainstorm ways that the “Johnny” philosophy and the” Simple Truths of Servic”e can be adapted to the school setting. We will encourage them to include ideas for how they can be like Johnny and go the extra mile for our students and parents.
We plan to tie this idea in with our character education program by encouraging the students to give “service to themselves” by working hard and behaving in class. We also want them to give “service to their peers and the school community” by respecting their classmates and their teachers. We are creating a “pass” that faculty/staff can give to students who demonstrate exceptional service. Students will bring the pass to the office for a trip to our special treasure box 🙂
We have decided to put a large “Johnny” bag up in the cafeteria. Since it is “service from the heart” that we are aiming for, we will use heart cut-outs on this bag to recognize students, teachers and parents who exemplify this ideal.
I plan to recognize teachers who go the extra mile each week in my weekly staff newsletter and we will also share this initiative with parents in our monthly school newsletter.
It just so happened that I was in town on August 16 when they kicked off this initiative, so I offered to stop by and speak to the teachers.
The marquis when I arrived at the school!
Francine wrote to many of the District personnel and their corporate sponsors to invite them to this event:
I have such wonderful news to share with you…I hope you can visit Muller Elementary on Monday, 8/16, at 10:30 AM to share in an exciting event.
Barbara Glanz and Ken Blanchard wrote a book called The Simple Truths of Service. It is designed to help organizations reshape their culture around serving the customer.
The book includes an unforgettable true story about a very special young man who takes a chance and changes the culture of a grocery store. More than 5 million people have been touched by this story.
Johnny is young man living with Down Syndrome who changes the culture of a grocery store by being creative and giving the customers more than they expect. He puts his own personal signature on each and every interaction.
I was personally inspired by Barbara Glanz’s book and I felt that her message of “service from the heart” could truly have an impact on the teachers at Muller so I decided to adopt this concept as a theme for the 2010-2011 school year. We plan to kick off this new initiative during preplanning and we are confident that “Johnny the Bagger’s” story will change the way we at Muller serve our students and parents.
I have been so excited about this new venture that I decided to write to Barbara Glanz. It turns out that this concept has never been adopted by an elementary school and Ms. Glanz is thrilled that we have taken the leap. Here’s the best part…BARBARA GLANZ HAS DECIDED TO VISIT MULLER ELEMENTARY ON MONDAY, AUGUST 16TH AT 10:30 AM TO SHARE HER ENCOURAGING WORDS WITH OUR TEACHERS! We are honored that she decided to come and we hope you can plan to be here as well to share in this exciting experience.
It truly was an honor and a thrill to see how one person (Francine) and one small school could take the philosophy I share all over the world and apply it to so many facets of their work and lives. I will be following and cheering on all the staff, parents, and children of Muller as they do their best to make a difference in the world!
For more information about Barbara’s work, go to www.barbaraglanz.com
