I was extra excited to see what others had to say on this topic because it can seem so simple, yet challenging to actually do. Education is constantly changing and that is what makes us lifelong learners. However, resistance to that change or adapting wrong habits is still too common in education. I believe because when change occurs, not everyone is on board with the reason why the change is coming about. Being a leader means giving every person a reason to believe that the change will benefit them.
Andrea brought up great points about how even though she held the title of the mentor, her and her mentee worked together. There wasn’t a blatant hierarchy- it was a collaboration. I don’t think I stressed this point enough (or at all) in my first post. However, I fully agree that this is the model of a great leader and the relationships with the team. Though leaders may have an idea or know a direction to take, the leader gets on the same level as the group to collaborate, share, and create a successful change.
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Thinking about change has been on the forefront of my mind. My district is in this phase of changing 2nd grade to a whole new school-- from 2nd to 5th to a K-2 school. Though this may have a lot of benefits, it is hard to see them all with so much disruption. I know this change will bring to light a whole plethora of new strategies, issues, techniques, philosophies and so forth. More importantly, this shift and change will make it obvious who can lead through change and who succumbs to resistance. As for me, this particular question and class has lifted me up and away to see from a different perspective. Change, regardless of its benefits, is enough to make people cringe and fight back. This week's question really makes me think about how I can take a potentially not-so-great situation and turn it into a chance to co-create and collaborate. Embracing the change could lead to creation of more practical and relevant curriculum. The change could allow for more growth in areas it may have been hard to reach with our previous school. Change, in all its vulnerable and unknown essence, CAN be the answer if the right people are leading the change. What I am realizing is that I have the potential to take this disruption and turn it into coherence making. Chapter six in our reading, Leading in a Culture of Change, outlines this as part of the essential characteristics to being a great leader. I find this element of leadership probably the most intimidating and risky. The text goes on to make it seem a lot more simple than most may experience by saying, “When change occurs, there will be disturbances, and this means that there will be differences of opinion that must be reconciled. Effective leadership means guiding people through the differences and, indeed, enabling differences to surface (Fullan, 2001).” With this new element I looked to the internet to figure how do people lead change in a successful productive manner? The article, 4 Things Successful Change Leaders Do, states these four core elements:
The picture found below is a good summary of change through self, others, and organizations. At each level, all are affected differently and these questions help process the unknown variables into manageable changes. Fullan, M. 2001. Leading in a Culture of Change. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED467449.pdf
Dinwoodie, D. Navigating Change: A Leader’s Role. Retrieved from https://media.ccl.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/navigating-change-a-leaders-role-center-for-creative-leadership.pdf Ready, D. 2016. 4 Things Successful Change Leaders Do. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2016/01/4-things-successful-change-leaders-do-well Week 11: What is the role of knowledge creation and sharing in a healthy educational organization?4/7/2017 One area of knowledge sharing that was a new idea to me was Edcamp. The first time I heard of it was when Dr. Lee briefly brought it up in our twitter discussion. I clicked on the links and had no idea what any of it meant. I continued to do more research on Edcamp and found out it is an open collaborative professional development strategy. Instead of professional development coming across as, “take this knowledge and run with it.” It creates the question at the very beginning of the session, “what do YOU, as a teacher, want to collaborate on?” It is a very organic and personable way to share knowledge with others. As stated from the Edcamp website, “Edcamp is a mosaic of ideas explored through conversation. Without a safe environment to share, debate, and curiously investigate what's best for kids, the power of Edcamp will be lost.”
The idea of this type of collaboration supports the theory that, “tacit knowledge is deeply rooted in an individual's action and experience, as well as in the ideals, values, or emotions that he or she embraces. Successful organizations access tacit knowledge (Fullan, 2001).” Relating back to the question this week, the role of knowledge sharing is to bridge the gap between surface knowledge and deep rooted knowledge. As a first year teacher, I have been doing what I can to dig into all the veteran teacher’s thoughts and feelings. Though I can’t help but feel like they still don’t share all they know. How do I collaborate and tap into their strategies/techniques/thoughts without them feeling like I am questioning their decisions? It is definitely much harder in reality than in a text. For example, the text Leading in a Culture of Change, argues that getting people to share can create a collaborative learning culture. Although, I would argue that no matter how many bridges and pathways you create to make it easier for people to share, in the education world it can be hard to get everyone on board. Further research on this topic led me to an article that listed ten ideas for knowledge sharing:
Sources: Edcamp. 2017. Edcamp For All. Retrieved from http://www.edcamp.org/blog-post/edcamp-all Fullan, Michael. 2001. Leading in a Culture of Change. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED467449.pdf Wolf, Jennifer. 2016. Top 10 ideas for Knowledge Sharing in Education. Retrieved from http://learningaccelerator.org/blog/2016/5/top-10-ideas-for-knowledge-sharing-in-education A goal for myself after all this leadership talk is to one day become the leader I hear so many people talk about. Any person in a leadership role has critics-- “he/she isn’t doing enough,” “they are too soft,” “they are too rigid,” “they don’t know what they are doing,” “they don’t have enough experience,” “he/she isn’t doing what’s best for us.” Part of life is taking the good with the bad. I never really considered that all the leaders I have had in my life have made a conscious effort to either include the wrong and the right people, or exclude the “wrong.”
I am curious how much of their choosing affected their ability to successfully lead everyone. Were the ones who only picked the “right” people often criticized and under appreciated? Or were they successful in different aspects? This week had me thinking a lot about leaders in my past and why I liked them. They valued everyone. They took time to hear everyone-- even the people whom were considered outliers. Larissa related this whole idea to our students-- which I appreciated. Do we give up on our difficult students just because we don’t agree with their decisions? Or do we persevere and continue to help them because that is our job? The same idea is related to a leader. Leaders don’t give up and don’t just walk away. True leaders hear you and consider your perspective. Andrea supported her leadership with a quiz that gave her a statistical look at her strengths/weaknesses. This is something I have not done so it was nice to get a quick quiz to look at. When I look at very influential leaders they all share a common message- relationships matter. You cannot be a leader without the support of others. From Trump to the Dalai Lama, leading is inexistent without building relationships. The statement, “Get the right people on your team, and get the wrong ones off,” holds little truth in our world today. If we only focus on one group of people, we move in a linear direction. As I saw with the election, though Trump has some absurd values, he was able to convince many types of groups that his leadership was ideal-- just as an example.
In chapter four of, Leading in a Culture of Change, it outlines seven attributes to building relationships and supports the statement that, “leaders create relationships.” The seven aspects to developing relationships are as follows (Fullan, 2001):
I truly believe that the best leader is the one who lets the (often) unheard be heard. Leaders give voice to those who may not be able to or feel like the outlier. Looking at this question from a statistical perspective, we see a rise in women leaders. As reported by Forbe, many interesting findings have been revealed with the rise of women leaders. Forbe reports that, “While communication is seen as the most important attribute of good leaders by both sexes, women are more likely to perceive this skill in terms of listening and engaging in two-way dialogue, while men are more likely to focus on broadcasting message (Medland, 2016).” This hits the point that relationship building, rather than dictator-leading, influences the mass. It hears all sides and involves all perspectives. It keeps the “wrong” and the “right” on the playing field so that the best possible outcome can be collaboratively created. Through a study done by 438,000 respondents, the findings were that, “ "Managers with experience building relationships are seen as more effective (Baldoni, 2007).” Just knowing my personal experience with leaders, I had the most respect and favored the ones who I saw care and show respect for each individual person. We teach our students to care about one another and have respect, and it isn’t surprising that even as adults we uphold the leaders who carry these attributes. Baldoni, John. 2007. Great Leaders Build Off Great Relationships. Retrieved from http://www.cio.com/article/2437699/leadership-management/great-leaders-build-off-great-relationships.html Medland, Dina. 2016. Today’s Gender Reality in Statistics, or Making Leadership Attractive to Women. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/dinamedland/2016/03/07/todays-gender-reality-in-statistics-or-making-leadership-attractive-to-women/#44c0b5ea6883 Schaefer, B. 2015. On Becoming a Leader: Building Relationships and Creating Communities. Retreived from http://er.educause.edu/articles/2015/10/on-becoming-a-leader-building-relationships-and-creating-communities There have been a few experiences in my life where I took the role of “mentoring” adult learners. I blindly went into it knowing that, however I proceeded, it had to be much different than how I taught children. This experience was in Thailand where I mentored Thai English teachers how to teach English. I knew their perception of learning varied person to person and I had to accommodate that and their desires. I had to make the learning interesting and appealing to a group of adults who shared a vastly different culture than mine. Had I read the articles from this week before this experience, I think I would have approached the teaching much differently.
A few takeaways I learned from this week was that each adult has their own unique learning style and perception of learning. Years of experience means that most adults have pinpointed how they like to learn and what they like to learn. Sara and Natalie talked about mentoring and how this creates a balanced relationship between learner and mentor. Sara said, “As adults we want to share what we know and as kids we are trying to absorb as much as we can,” which I believe perfectly sums up the main difference between adult learner and child. Gerald talked about how he never had a mentor in his early years of teaching. That got me to thinking of how I am so fortunate to have a mentor during my first year, but why? I think the main benefit I am getting from a mentor/mentee relationship is reassurance and confidence. I am doing things in my classroom for the first time, and hearing someone say, “yes your are on the right track; you are doing this right,” is worth years of confidence and effective teaching. The contributions I made to this week’s learning was in the twitter discussion. I tried to ask questions that were thought-provoking to everyone. Although we don’t all teach adults, we can use the contrast and comparisons to help us better teach our own age group. I think this week we really emphasized the need for motivation to learn. Motivation happens best when there is interest, options, and self-directive opportunities. There have been a few experiences in my life where I took the role of “mentoring” adult learners. I blindly went into it knowing that, however I proceeded the mentoring, it had to be much different than how I taught children. This experience was in Thailand where I mentored Thai English teachers how to teach English. I knew their perception of learning varied person to person and I had to accommodate that and their desires. I had to make the learning interesting and appealing to a group of adults who shared a vastly different culture than mine. Had I read the articles from this week before this experience, I think I would have approached the teaching much differently.
A few takeaways I learned from this week was that each adult has their own unique learning style and perception of learning. Years of experience means that most adults have pinpointed how they like to learn and what they like to learn. Sara and Natalie talked about mentoring and how this creates a balanced relationship between learner and mentor. Sara said, “As adults we want to share what we know and as kids we are trying to absorb as much as we can,” which I believe perfectly sums up the main difference between adult learner and child. Gerald talked about how he never had a mentor in his early years of teaching. That got me to thinking of how I am so fortunate to have a mentor during my first year, but why? I think the main benefit I am getting from a mentor/mentee relationship is reassurance and confidence. I am doing things in my classroom for the first time, and hearing someone say, “yes your are on the right track; you are doing this right,” is worth years of confidence and effective teaching. The contributions I made to this week’s learning was in the twitter discussion. I tried to ask questions that were thought-provoking to everyone. Although we don’t all teach adults, we can use the contrast and comparisons to help us better teach our own age group. I think this week we really emphasized the need for motivation to learn. Motivation happens best when there is interest, options, and self-directive opportunities. When I look at this question from the opposite lens there is one immediate similarity. The importance of offering options, independence, and guidance (rather than direct instruction) are key for motivation. Both children and adults need to have that excitement in education. The differences start to become more evident when thinking about how to influence student motivation. Adults are greatly influenced by their environment and experiences. This directly affects the way they look at learning, new content, teachers, and the learning experience. Deb Peterson wrote in her article, “5 Principles for the Teacher of Adult Learners,” that there are five set principles for the adult learner:
Through my online research I found, not surprisingly, a common message: adults need active learning experiences. Just like children, adults don’t learn best through traditional lecture. A few examples of this type of teaching/mentoring are case studies, role plays, classroom training, experiential learning, games, simulations, projects, and self-studies (Northwest Center for Public Health Practice, 2012). Papa, R. (2011). Technology Leadership for School Improvement. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications,Inc.http://egandb.uas.alaska.edu:2051/login.aspxdirect=true&db=nlebk&AN=467141&site=ehost-live&ebv=EB&ppid=pp_91 on March 11, 2017
Peterson, Deb. (2017). 5 Principles for the Teacher of Adults. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/principles-for-the-teacher-of-adults-31638 Northwest Center for Public Health Practice. 2012. Effective Adult Learning: a toolkit for teaching adults. Retrieved from https://www.ag.ndsu.edu/evaluation/documents/effective-adult-learning-a-toolkit-for-teaching-adults When I think of leadership these days, it is hard to say that a healthy moral purpose gets you to the top. I look at our president and those who are leaders in their own department and support him. I look at our secretary of education, big oil companies, and banks and wonder if their moral purpose is the same driving force as a leader in education.
Our twitter discussion and blogs all agreed that moral purpose (whether altruistic or egoistic) builds a leader and inspires others. However, when I look outside of the education world this isn't the same pattern I see in other areas. With that being said, this week inspired me even more to do what I can to use my moral purpose to teach my students about their own moral purpose in life. A few blogs, such as Sara's, said that their moral purpose is all about doing the right thing. I appreciated in her blog that she said, "sometimes this means changes to my own teaching philosophy." A true leader, in my opinion, is able to learn from others and use that to shape their beliefs. Natalie discussed teaching her students how to use their energy to reach their fullest potential. I think this is a great point that should be taught at the early ages. Self-sufficient and aware of one's own ability is a huge life skill that doesn't always get taught each year. My contribution to this week was mainly during the twitter discussion. I felt like the questions I asked prompted people to really look at moral purpose from different angles. The conversation was productive and although we could all say, "yeah we have moral purpose because we are in education," instead, everyone gave specifics and details on what their own moral purpose looks like and how moral purpose, in general, shapes our society. The backbone to any motive or leader is purpose. There is a purpose, whether altruistic or egoistic, that drives people to do what we do. In education, we are constantly surrounded by liked-minded people who are pushing through the hard times because of their moral purpose.
The strategies that I see naturally come out because of my moral purpose is teaching to the whole student. My value’s make it so that I am always teaching children who are growing rather than students who need information. I use strategies to teach, such as mindfulness, yoga, and metacognitive practices. Educational jargon can get in the way of the root of what schools’ purposes are, but I completely agree with the article by Nel Noddings that education’s purpose should be happiness (Noddings, 2005). I know personally that my moral purpose ultimately makes me do the things I do because I want to bring (or teach) happiness to my students. With this in mind every day, I am able to use strategies common to other educators such as,
I know that I have a big influence in shaping each student I meet into a kind and purpose-driven citizen. Every day in my classroom I look at ways to accomplish this by shaping my voice, lessons, body language, classroom environment, and student interaction around social emotional learning. Activities that develop children’s ability to, “recognize and manage emotions, build relationships, solve interpersonal problems, and make effective and ethical decisions,” are a huge part of my teaching because it shapes SEL (Yoder, 2014). Of course, the motives behind it stem from an altruistic and egoistic mindset. As Learning in a Culture of Change states, all effective leaders are driven by both (altruistic and egoistic) what Sober and Wilson call "motivational pluralism, which is the view that we have both egoistic and altruistic ultimate desires (Fullan, pg.28). I believe being aware of which part is altruistic and which is egoistic (and which weighs more) steers a person to the other areas of leadership. Being cognitive of the fact that it isn’t all a holy deed out of righteousness makes a person balance the other areas of leadership. When I think of overall leadership, the driving force behind it is moral purpose. A leader who is completely altruistic and tries to lead a group may become overshadowed by the moral purpose and burn out because of their needs not being met. However, a person who knows what part of it is intrinsic (or extrinsic) motivation for themselves may keep a clear eye on the goal during any successes and failures. ASCD Whole Child Bloggers. 2012. Educating the Whole Child: The Top 5 Strategies. Retrieved from http://www.wholechildeducation.org/blog/educating-the-whole-child-top-5-strategies-for-educators Fullian, Michael. 2001. Leading in a Culture of Change. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED467449.pdf Noddings, Nel. 2015. What does it mean to educate the whole child? Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/sept05/vol63/num01/What-Does-It-Mean-to-Educate-the-Whole-Child%C2%A2.aspx Yoder, N. 2014. Teaching the Whole Child. Retrieved from http://www.gtlcenter.org/sites/default/files/TeachingtheWholeChild.pdf |
Author2nd Grade teacher at Keet Gooshi Heen in Sitka, Alaska Archives
April 2017
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