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teacher. That’s why it’s so important to acknowledge your leadership—are
you leading others in the direction you want to go?
Teaching and leading have other similarities. They involve many of the
same skills. Because you are a good teacher, you can be a good leader as
well. You are already doing it. You already know how. It’s just a matter of
recognizing your leadership and paying attention. You do this with children
every day. You can do it with adults too.

This book is designed to give you an introduction to leadership theory
and practice whether you work in a center, family child care setting, pre-
school, school-age care setting, or any other work environment involving
children. You’ll learn the definitions of what leadership is (and is not) and
some functions and styles of leadership. You’ll learn about the roles of
empowerment, followership, and advocacy in leadership, as well as your own
role in facilitating the development of leadership in others. You’ll learn how
to use your knowledge of child development to understand leadership devel-
opment and how to transfer your natural skills and abilities to a number of
leadership situations and circumstances. Being able to transfer your abili-
ties from one area to another will help you recognize the leader within.

Each chapter is built around a combination of theories, examples, and
reflection questions—all designed to give you opportunities to fully exam-
ine and fully appreciate your own strengths, gifts, attitudes, values, chal-
lenges, and motivations and reflect on how these influence your leadership
development. And what good is a book if it doesn’t contain some stories?
Each chapter ends with a little vignette that puts some of the ideas you’ve
read into action. It is not possible to include everything you need to know
about leadership in one book, so I have also included ideas, information, and
references for further study, learning, and practice.

While playing with blocks, children learn about weight, balance, grav-
ity, construction, destruction, addition, subtraction, and working with other
children. In much the same way that children transfer playing to learning
possibilities, I hope you will transfer the knowledge you gain from reading
this book to your everyday life. Using this book, you will examine your abil-
ity to change the world. To the young child, all adults are leaders and have
the power, authority, and status to change the world. Just turn the page
to begin understanding and implementing what young children already
know! COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL
Preface xi




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COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL