Huntingburg Elementary students showcase leadership notebooks in Lighthouse push

Leadership notebooks from Huntingburg Elementary students landed in front of Southwest Dubois County School board members, giving families a first-hand look at how the school is trying to turn a leadership slogan into everyday practice.

At the April 17 meeting, students from the school at 501 W. Sunset Drive in Huntingburg showed off the notebooks as part of Huntingburg Elementary’s journey toward Leader in Me Lighthouse status. The presentation put the focus on student voice, goal-setting and responsibility, the kinds of traits parents often notice long before test scores or awards.

That matters because the school is not starting from scratch. Huntingburg Elementary’s 2025-2026 handbook already includes a Leader in Me section, and the handbook’s mission statement says, “We all belong. We all work hard. We all grow. We are HBE. Every Student. Every Day.” Megan Anselment is listed as principal, and the school homepage lists 776 enrolled students, 194 dual language students and 100% PLTW participation.

The Lighthouse effort is tied to a certification process Leader in Me says is earned only when a school implements the model with fidelity. The program measures schools in three areas: teaching leadership principles, creating a leadership culture and aligning academic systems. Students are expected to track goals in leadership notebooks and share them during student-led conferences, which is why the notebooks shown at the board meeting were more than a display piece. They were evidence that the school is trying to build habits that show up in classrooms, conferences and schoolwide routines.

For Dubois County families, the bigger question is whether that culture shift produces concrete results in the parts of school life that affect children every day: attendance, discipline, confidence and responsibility. Leader in Me says Lighthouse schools are meant to serve as exemplars to their communities and other schools, and its impact materials say the schools go through a two-year training regimen and an on-site review by FranklinCovey before earning that designation.

Huntingburg Elementary is also layering the leadership work onto an already distinctive academic profile. Southwest Dubois County School Corporation says the school’s dual language immersion program began in 2019, uses a 50/50 English-Spanish model and will reach its first full K-5 completion with the class of 2030. That makes the Lighthouse push part of a broader identity at the school, one that combines bilingual learning, PLTW participation and a public emphasis on student leadership.

No final certification decision was announced at the meeting, but the notebook presentation showed the school is moving beyond promotion and putting student work in front of the people who will judge whether the effort has real staying power.