#Fullycharged Leadership: A CUI Symposium Recap

Saturdays are meant for catching up on laundry, doing yard work, or taking a leisurely afternoon walk, but not for getting up at the crack of dawn to get ready for a four-hour presentation UNLESS Julie Adams is the keynote speaker. Such was the good fortune last Saturday for the MAED Administrative students and guests.

Julie Adams bedazzled all present with her wit, insights, rock-solid and practical suggestions for personal and professional growth. Without being didactic or too erudite, Julie gave clear, concise and insightful examples using her knowledge of neuroscience to explain when stress is decreased in the young brain it functions better to increase success. Also by giving teenagers choices; why if scenarios; cause and effect examples; and helping them identify their emotions you are providing them with a gift to better deal with life’s unexpected bumps and bruises. Most kids want to be successful, and with skills and strategies that are grown through perseverance, hard work and having lower levels of cortisol, they can be efficacious because success is not by chance it is by design. Three takeaways that resonated with me the most and have given me cause to ponder deeper are the following comments.

• Maslow before Bloom! In so many classes I was taught and taught my students the tenets of both Maslow’s fully functioning person and Bloom’s taxonomy theory were mainstay concepts, but never did I place them in any connected social-emotional order, they were just separate hypotheses to be learned. Oh, give me the chance to redo what I didn’t think to do earlier!
• Everyone has a list of ‘X’ numbered concepts to follow, however, Julie’s 5 C’s rang a bell with me because of their commonality and connectedness. The Five C’s of Competence, Confidence, Critical Thinking, Creativity, and Compassion are so universal in being a solid foundation for making one more capable and competitive in whatever one does.
• What further stood out in Julie’s presentation was her vision of how the bigger picture of education is so interlocked with other professions that each can be synthesized into understandable nuggets that are practical and transferable. Take for example her Fully Charged S.E.E.D.S. for Success. It matters not what you do or what you want to achieve we all need to be committed to a lifestyle that is based on wellness and restoring mental health. Julie’s tips are Sleep: Eat: Exercise: Drink (water): and Socialize. Not that any of these needs are uncommon, but they are succinctly stated and spot-on for future reference.

In closing, no presenter can talk for 4-hours and not have the audience yawning and shuffling in their seats unless she is engaging, entertaining and informative. Due to her down to earth style, humanistic anecdotes, and personal perspective that encapsulated life lessons and real-world situations, Julie kept her audience mesmerized from the get-go. Her uncanny ability to keep things real made her audience comfortable with her message allowing them to gain more than another ‘trick of the trade’ to implement, she gave them reasons to be difference makers.