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Learn Always

~ A blog about teaching, learning, and leadership by Jennifer Rimnyak

Tag Archives: goals

Staying Inside the Lines: Reflections on Learning from my Adult Colouring Book

13 Wednesday Jan 2016

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creativity, FSL, goals, growth mindset, instructional practice, learning skills, reflection

I have never been very good at art. Dramatic Arts yes, music definitely, but visual arts were never my cup of tea. Despite this, I asked for and received an adult colouring book for Christmas, and I must admit that I’ve become slightly obsessed with it. I have spent so many hours flipping through the pages, trying to select which one to colour, then agonizing over which colours to choose, then engaging in the slow and meticulous process of filling in the design. And although colouring is not visual arts per se, my somewhat meditative hours spent in the book have brought me to reflect on my very first statement and the nature of learning.

Reflection 1: On the Messiness and Scariness of True Learning

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I began this post stating that I’m not good at art. Most of that is my own fault. As a child and a teenager, if I wasn’t good at something right away, I stopped pursuing it. Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately?), at the risk of sounding braggy, I had a natural aptitude for enough things that I had the luxury of avoiding those areas where I struggled.

I have always said that I love to learn; as a child, as a teenager, and as an adult, I have never strayed from the desire to discover new knowledge and skills (I mean, look at the title of this blog!). But reflecting now, the learning that I loved as a student was the easy, neat kind: the kind where the next piece of knowledge followed logically from the previous and fit perfectly into my cognitive construct, where the next part of the skill flowed perfectly and built directly upon the foundation I already had. When learning was too challenging or messy, I ran for the hills. Again, at the risk of sounding braggy, I was a gifted identified student and considered by my peers and teachers as one of the top students in my grade, but my mindset was so narrow and fixed. So many of our students, especially those who are gifted or who usually pick up on new concepts quickly, do respond as I used to and avoid the struggle.

It wasn’t until my math courses in university that I encountered a situation where I couldn’t avoid the struggle anymore. This was the first time that I found math to be truly difficult, and I couldn’t just pick another course as math was my chosen minor. I had to engage in some productive struggle and stretch myself in order to understand, but in the end, some of that learning was so much more satisfying than any of the learning I had done before. Again, even though colouring is not me creating a visual arts piece from scratch, I’m considering it my first small step toward stretching myself in that area and truly learning some new skills.

Reflection 2: On Perfectionism

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Every time I have gone outside the lines on my drawing so far I have cringed. The patterns are so intricate that sometimes a small error is unavoidable. But when I zoom out and look at the whole image, those little imperfections fade away, and all I see are the beautiful colours and patterns.

As a teenager, you guessed it, I was a pretty hardcore perfectionist. Those tendencies still rear their ugly head from time to time now in my adult life, but as an educator my mindset really has changed. It was always so important to me to pour hours and hours into each project and task, to script and time oral presentations exactly to the teacher’s specifications, to check and double check and triple check math questions – all with the mindset that the final product was final, the endpoint, and there would be nothing more to take from it once it was completed and submitted.

Now I know, and try my very best to demonstrate to students, that there is still learning to be had and that perfection is not the ultimate, nor really an attainable goal. Instead the focus should be on continuously learning and improving, reflecting on those products that were thought to be final. In French classes, so many students are afraid to speak in discussions because they don’t want to make a mistake (totally the teenage me). As a teacher, I always call attention to my own oral production. As a bilingual person and a teacher of the language, I still make the occasional grammar mistake when writing or speaking, or can’t find the word I want to say and need to talk around it or use a more basic word. Obviously my students (and myself) are working toward more grammatical precision, but at the end of the day, if their message is clear despite some mistakes, then the goal of the communication has been accomplished – just like when I zoom out of my coloured image and my scribbles outside the lines become less and less evident. As long as we are improving each time we engage in a task: whether that task is a math problem, engaging in a second language conversation, or colouring, then perfection ceases to be the be-all and end-all goal. Learning instead takes its place in the forefront.

Funny the thoughts a simple colouring book can provoke.

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How do we teach culture?

08 Tuesday Dec 2015

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creativity, curriculum, FSL, goals, inquiry, instructional practice

This is the third article in a series dedicated to the Enduring Ideas presented in the front matter of the revised Ontario FSL Curriculum.

In the document, this enduring idea is titled: Interdependence of Language and Culture. Culture has not previously held such a prominent place in our FSL Curriculum as it does in this newest version, so many educators are stuck on my titular question: how do we teach French culture effectively when it encompasses so many different things?

In my test run with my FIF2D (Grade 1o French Immersion) classes last year weaving the old curriculum with the new, I focused on intercultural awareness with a biais towards pop/youth culture and arts culture, mainly in France and French-speaking Europe. I wanted to start with something to which my students would readily relate. Here are two ways I exposed my students to French pop culture:

1) Music Videos

Each week, we watched and analysed a music video. I used my personal knowledge of popular French artists as well as a Google search for current Top 10/20/50 songs in France (many of which are English-language songs from North America – interesting how our culture crosses more into theirs than vice versa). Depending on the song and video, our approach differed:

  • Watch/listen and then discuss meaning/theme/reaction in small groups or as a whole class
  • Watch/listen, do an individual quick-write or some form of written response
  • Watch/listen, read along with a copy of the lyrics, discuss how the video does or does not represent the lyrics
  • Watch/listen, read lyrics, rewrite sections of lyrics for another purpose or audience
  • Compare/contrast songs/videos from the same artist or from different artists

My students enjoyed all of these activities and readily participated. Many of them actually downloaded songs and albums of these French artists from iTunes!

2) Festivals

I had a student teacher last year, and she was excited to explore teaching culture to the students as well. Her unit was based on festivals (music, art, food, etc.) in French countries/regions. She researched and presented to the students a variety of festivals from all over the world. Students analysed posters and videos promoting these festivals, planned a visit to a festival of their choice, and then had to create and promote their own cultural festival. Again, this was a strong unit for cultural awareness.

Growth Areas/Future Plans – Cultural Inquiry

As much as I am proud of the work that my student teacher and I accomplished in terms of exposing students to and leading them to interact and engage with different French-speaking cultures, both of these examples are teacher-driven. The next time I have an FIF course on my timetable, my personal goal is to approach culture through student inquiry. My student teacher found so many festivals and resources which were so wonderful, but how much more wonderful would it have been if the students had asked the question about French festivals and celebrations of culture, conducted the research, synthesized the information, and shared the findings with each other? What about having the students find the artists and music videos and taking a lead in the discussion and analysis rather than being guided by me? This is one of my own personal goals as a teacher not just in FIF language classes but in all of my classes – take a step back, and let go of the reins a little more often. Every time I do, my students rise to the occasion.

Goal-Setting, Reflection, and Metacognition in FSL – Part 1 of Ontario FSL Curriculum Transition Series

07 Tuesday Apr 2015

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assessment as learning, creativity, curriculum, FSL, goals, growth mindset, instructional practice, learning skills, metacognition, reflection, self-assessment

For the first official post in my blog series about transitioning to Ontario’s new FSL curriculum in my classroom, I begin with some context. I have been teaching in a secondary French Immersion program for almost three years. This semester is the first time I have had an FIF course on my timetable. During the first two and a half years, I taught the other courses in the program, such as Mathematics and Dramatic Arts, in French. Right now, I have two FIF2D courses and a PPL3OI (Co-ed Immersion HPE). I have been experimenting with aspects of the new curriculum in my two FIF2D classes and that’s where my reflections will be coming from.

enduring_ideas1

Speaking of reflection, the new curriculum now has a metacognition expectation in each strand, and goal setting and reflection comprise one of the Enduring Ideas addressed in the front matter of the document. I spent the first two weeks of the semester simply engaging in diagnostic learning activities with my students. We listened to French (mostly through videos), had small and large group discussions in French, read two short stories in French, and wrote two short compositions in French. After these initial diagnostics addressing each strand, students consulted their feedback – written comments I had made on their work, assessment rubrics indicating their levels of achievement in various aspects of oral and written communication, and their own impressions of their strengths and growth areas. I then asked each student to set a small, specific goal for improvement. They each wrote their goal on a post-it note (in French of course), and stuck it to the wall of the classroom, so that all of our goals were visible and so that we could hold each other accountable. (Side note: writing goals was a great opportunity to review futur simple [“I will…”], futur proche [“I’m going to…”], and verb + infinitive [“Je veux faire/atteindre…”]).

At the end of February, I had a one-on-one oral interview with each student as an evaluation of their oral communication and as a check-in on their goal. Each student took their post-it off the wall that day and brought it with them to the oral interview. They were also given a self-assessment organiser with a short rating scale and some questions to guide their reflections about their progress over the first month (this tool was developed in conjunction with the French Immersion Department). During the interview, each student justified their choice of goal – why was it their choice, where did it come from – and then also explained what steps they had taken so far, and if they had been successful in achieving their goal.

Many students set a goal that was too large and complex to accomplish in two weeks, but all students had at minimum made progress towards their goal. This shows me that I need to be more purposeful about explicitly teaching goal-setting as a skill, as well as breaking down your big goals into smaller ones to make tracking progress simpler.

In addition to this multi-step process, I have been including reflection pieces at the end of evaluation tasks, a practice that I had already been using regularly, mostly from the influence of teaching Dramatic Arts and Physical Education where reflection and self-assessment occurs constantly. For example, we had a class debate on the topic of which educational program (French Immersion, IB, Coop, SHSM, etc.) is the best course of study. Following the debate (which occurred in teams), each student completed an individual written reflection discussing their personal opinion after hearing everyone’s arguments, which other students they found to be the most persuasive and convincing during the debate and why, and a self-assessment of their personal performance in the debate. Most students gave quite an honest appraisal of their level of achievement for the debate, and some were even more critical of themselves than I was.

Finally, I often ask students in all of my classes to self-assess when they are about to submit an evaluation. They take out their rubric (or grab a new copy from me) and either circle or highlight the levels of achievement they believe that they have demonstrated and submit this along with the task. Then I use a different colour pen or highlighter when I complete the evaluation. Sometimes I also have students complete a justification, either in writing or through a conversation. This works best when the rubrics have either been co-created with students, or are designed with clear student-friendly descriptors for each criterion.

If you are curious to see any assessment tools or the tasks that I have discussed in this post, please feel free to visit my class website at fif2d1i.wikispaces.com. What have you done in your classroom to promote metacognition, reflection, goal-setting, and student self-assessment? I’d love to hear ideas from other teachers, FSL or otherwise.

Blog Series – Transitioning to Ontario’s new FSL Curriculum

06 Monday Apr 2015

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curriculum, FSL, goals, inquiry, instructional practice, leadership, reflection

Last month, I presented at my school’s School Council Meeting, and it was a new and interesting experience for me. Our principal has initiated the practice of inviting a different teacher each month to present to parents what they have been learning and working on. Parents have heard about Problem-Based Learning, new Assessment & Evaluation practices, and even the learning goals of one of our Vice Principals. I was surprised when the principal reached out to me and asked me to be the presenter for the March meeting.

It took some time for me to settle on what to present. As the title of this blog suggests, my personal philosophy and mission is to always be learning. In addition, with teaching such a variety of courses at the school, I have quite a range of experiences and different learning that I do with each discipline. My principal’s suggestions to help me narrow my focus were to concentrate somehow on my recent Leadership 1 course, and to talk about current learning with the classes I have this semester.

I was able to springboard from there to the very broad topic of transitioning to the new FSL curriculum in my FIF2D classes (this semester), and in general with the French Immersion Learning Team (as a potential informal leader on the team). I was nervous to so openly speak about my learning and how I am experimenting with new activities and ideas, but it was a rewarding experience to hear support and engagement from the parents in attendance.

Based on my presentation, I’m starting a new series of blogs about my foray into Ontario’s new FSL curriculum in a secondary French Immersion classroom. Each entry will be based on one of the seven “Enduring Ideas” identified in the front matter of the new curriculum:

enduring_ideas(From page 8 of the 9-12 document)

Stay tuned for the first post later this week!

Facilitating Learning Teams – Reflection on my Eighth Session of Leadership 1

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

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conflict, goals, inquiry, leadership, OLF, problem-solving, professional relationships, shared leadership

The eighth session last week centred around learning teams, collaborative inquiry, problems of practice, and how to facilitate, lead, and share leadership within learning teams and communities.

During our first main activity I decided to be brave and volunteer for the unknown! Each group needed someone to volunteer to be the red personality (the details of which were not disclosed before the activity), and then everyone else in the group received other coloured personalities. We each read our information (without sharing with each other), and then were given the scenario that we were a team planning our final leadership course session celebration, including guest list, budget, menu, seating, greetings, etc. It turned out that the red personality for which I volunteered was the facilitator of the group. At first I was pleased, as working on my facilitation skills is a personal goal of mine. However, I quickly realized that all the other personalities around the table were going to be very difficult to bring together and actually facilitate once everyone took on their roles. We had a snacker, a very intense time-checker, a constantly distracted member, someone constantly on their cell phone, basically every nightmarish behaviour that we have all experienced (or maybe even participated in!) during staff meetings. I actually found that I used some of what we learned in the previous session about managing conflict, as the time-checker and the distracted person were losing patience with each other. I also tried to redirect my phone user to actually look things up for us to try to make their phone use valuable to the task. I will say that it was almost exhausting trying to keep the whole ship afloat and make decisions within this group, and we only worked for 15 minutes. I did however very much enjoy the opportunity to attempt to hone my facilitation skills, even with such a difficult group!

One other takeaway from this session is the different types of questions that facilitators or team members can ask each other to resolve cognitive conflicts and move towards solutions. We looked at examples of clarifying, specifying, and exploring questions, specifically in the context of a problem of practice or inquiry question to expand or refine thinking as necessary. They were great question starters for teacher teams, but they also reminded me to focus on my questioning techniques with students when they are engaging in collaborative and inquiry-based learning in class.

Another thought-provoking session, as always, with only two more to go!

Cognitive Conflict – Reflections on my Seventh Session of Leadership 1

09 Monday Feb 2015

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conflict, goals, leadership, problem-solving, professionalism

The title of this session was “Managing Conflict”, and I think many of the course participants (myself included), came into the evening with a preconceived notion of what the session would entail. I personally was a bit apprehensive and excited to discuss this topic as I know that conflict is not something I deal with in the best way. I tend to either avoid conflict entirely when possible, which often simply exacerbates the situation, or if avoiding is just not in the cards, I tend to retreat into myself and become very uncomfortable but also unable to extricate myself from the situation.

However, I was surprised and intrigued when personal or affective conflicts were only a small part of the agenda, and that there was a much more clear focus on cognitive conflict. I hadn’t actually heard this term previously, but now I know that I have most certainly engaged in many a cognitive conflict, and always to my benefit. Cognitive conflict was explained as being a conflict of ideas or approaches in which the issues are separated from the people. Cognitive conflict is an essential characteristic of high performing groups and teams because they push each other into new realms of understanding through the challenges of differing perspectives.

We were also given a framework for facilitating cognitive conflict in a group or team, which I want to bring to my learning team this semester to encourage deeper thinking and to clarify the positions of team members. Moving into more facilitator roles is something I want to try as a personal leadership goal, so I definitely see the framework as being an applicable tool for me.

Finally, the next day at school, my department head asked me about the session the previous evening, and I shared with her the focus on cognitive conflict. It was a PD Day for secondary schools and we were having learning team meetings that morning. My department head encouraged me to try to push in our group with my new knowledge of cognitive conflict as we would be discussing some hot topics such as triangulation of data and using professional judgement in determining our final grades. I was reminded how wonderful my department head is and how much she encourages me to take on small leadership roles on our French Immersion Department. Maybe I’m not so terrible at managing conflict after all!

One Word for 2015 – Creativity #oneword

19 Monday Jan 2015

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creativity, goals, growth mindset, instructional practice, leadership, professional learning network, reflection

So I’m definitely a little late to the game (if I can call it that without trivializing the conversation), but tonight I feel inspired to craft my #oneword blog post. I first saw Sue Dunlop’s post on New Year’s Eve, then Aviva Dunsiger’s entry, followed by Vicky Loras, and most recently George Couros. I know there have been other blog posts as well as Twitter statuses by many other educators sharing their #oneword, but these are the four that stand out in my memory so far in terms of diversity of word choice and explanation.

Without much further ado, my word for 2015 is Creativity.

My goal is to continue to be creative in my teaching practice and to push myself even further in this pursuit. My timetable for semester 2 is entirely comprised of courses that are new to me, so this is the perfect opportunity to try new things.

With my leadership course at HWDSB and my participation with my PLN on Twitter I am also hoping to be more creative in a professional and leadership capacity. I am learning creative ways to be a leader and to share my thinking and my growth as a teacher and as a leader with others through conversations, face-to-face or virtual, and more frequent blogging.

Finally, since my students are at the heart of everything that I do, part of my #oneword is to foster creativity in my students to a greater degree. It comes naturally when I teach drama, as it is one of my 6 C’s at the core of the course (Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Concentration, Control, and Confidence). However, I will be teaching different courses next semester and so will be searching out new strategies to encourage creative thinking. I already know that differentiation and student voice and choice will be major factors in this part of my goal, but I am also seeking outside input and ideas for my quest to encourage student creativity in Grade 10 French Immersion and Grade 11 Health and Physical Education.

Thanks to all the #oneword sharers so far, and to all, bon courage with your 2015 goal.

Defining The Ideal Leader – Reflections on My Third Session of Leadership 1

17 Monday Nov 2014

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building connections, goals, growth mindset, leadership, professional relationships, reflection

The third session was quite multi-faceted, so I’ll be concentrating my reflection on only two activities. Firstly, as a means of introduction to the SAT (Self-Assessment Tool for Aspiring Leaders), we were asked in our groups and/or individually to define some characteristics, competencies, and practices of effective leaders. Following that initial brainstorming, we were asked to walk around and share our thoughts with people in other groups, in hopes of starting conversations, and perhaps identifying some common threads. On the surface, this activity seemed simple enough (kind of like a think-pair-share), but it ended up being shockingly difficult.

The majority of the brainstorming time in my initial group centered around defining and differentiating between characteristics, competencies, and practices. However, once the walk-around began, I quickly discovered that different groups and individuals had defined each term in different ways. A large part of almost every conversation I had was focused on deciding how to recategorize their information into my framework rather than the free and open sharing of ideas.

Once we returned to our groups, we debriefed and shared the information we gathered from other people. During this time I will admit that I was not the most active participant in the conversation as I still needed to process and categorize everything from my conversations in a satisfactory way before I could move on. Using my own thoughts and those of my group, I see:

Characteristics as personality traits and the heart of a leader

(flexible, passionate, approachable, organized, resilient, honest, humble, optimistic, inspirational, reflective, empathetic, equitable, brave, adaptable)

Competencies as the skills, knowledge, and the head of a leader

(competent in the norms of collaboration, knowledge of high-yield instructional strategies, skills in active listening, emotional intelligence, mediation and facilitation skills)

Practices as the visible behaviours, habits, and actions of a leader

(building trust and relationships by talking, listening, and showing appreciation, modelling effective instructional strategies, setting high expectations, setting goals, reflecting, facilitating, communicating and collaborating positively and regularly)

Would you agree with the definitions for each category? Would you add any other traits, skills/competencies, or actions to any of the lists?

Secondly, the course facilitators introduced the SAT document and invited us to explore and discuss it within our groups, and to begin pondering our own personal leadership growth plan based on our strengths and weaknesses we identified in the document. Again, I admit that this was another discussion period where I was not very active. The first time I am introduced to something, my preference is to study it individually before talking it through with others, so I spent the majority of this time studying and absorbing the various sections of the document.

I still don’t have much more to say about the SAT or my own plan as I haven’t had many opportunities to continue my reflection since the third session, what with a four-day school excursion, midterm report cards, and life getting in the way. Unfortunately, session 4 begins in less than 48 hours and I am supposed to have a rough outline of my leadership growth plan to share with my group facilitator. Based on my (limited) thinking so far, I think I will need to bring a few ideas to be fleshed out and to receive feedback. I have yet to strike the plan that feels just right – not too small and narrow, but not too large and daunting. Hopefully I’ll find Goldilocks tomorrow.

“What’s Your Operating Style?” – Reflections on My Second Session of Leadership 1

15 Saturday Nov 2014

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decision-making, goals, growth mindset, leadership, problem-solving, reflection, shared leadership

Between sessions 1 and 2, each course participant was given a login and asked to complete the 4D-i assessment from One Smart World. Our second session together involved examining and interpreting our individual results, connecting with others who received similar results, and learning about those who had different results.

The Assessment

The 4D-i is an inventory of your personal operating style – your preferred methods to solve problems, make decisions, and communicate with others. For the purposes of this blog post, I will be greatly simplifying the 4D-i, but for more information you can visit the website, especially the sample portfolio.

The first part of the results is your colour which indicates your overall preference. There are three possibilities:

Red – Decision-Making

Red thinkers like to stop the process and get straight to making decisions and solving problems. They use strategies such as getting to the heart of issues, relying on past experience to guide actions, and listening to their gut feelings to move forward decisively.

Yellow – Understanding

Yellow thinkers slow down the process to gather data and understand people’s feelings. They collect, organize, and analyse information, express their own feelings and empathize with the opinions of others, and seek clarity on both fronts before taking action.

Green – Creating

Green thinkers delve into the process to generate more insights, ideas, and viewpoints. They brainstorm, seek out alternative problems and solutions, challenge current ideas and methods, and use their intuition to guide decision making.

Along with your colour, you are also categorized as warm, cool, or balanced. Warm thinkers prefer emotional strategies such as expressing feelings, empathizing with others, trusting your own heart, and making decisions based on your personal values. Cool thinkers employ logical strategies, including getting to the crux of a problem, gathering data, asking questions, and using past experiences. Balanced thinkers are equally comfortable using emotional and logical strategies.

The final section is a score of your Personal Spirit, which includes the strength of your outlook on life or challenging situations, your sense of having control to impact others in positive ways, and your initiative in the face of difficult tasks.

The Results

I came out of this process identified as a Balanced Yellow, with a slight edge for emotional over logical thinking, and as high in personal spirit with my initiative being my strongest factor. After discussing with fellow yellows, I found this to be a very accurate description of how I operate. It takes me time to come to a decision. When faced with a difficult decision or problem, my first instinct is to gather, structure, and organize all available and pertinent information systematically. I also take into account how different solutions or possibilities will make me feel. Further, if other people will be implicated in or affected by this problem or decision, then I feel strongly that I need to gather their thoughts, opinions, and feelings, and do my utmost to arrive at a conclusion that will be satisfying to everyone. I would definitely classify myself as a people pleaser – I want everyone to be on board with decisions and action plans when working in a team. On the flip side, I can sometimes find the whole process of making decisions exhausting. As well, because of my operating style, I have been described by friends and family as being very indecisive, which they can find at times quite frustrating. As a future leader, I need to be aware of the way my time-consuming actions are perceived by others.

Red was my second highest preference, with a very strong score in being values-driven when making decisions as well as needing to ensure that my solutions and conclusions are valid. However, I was almost angry at myself that I scored 0 (meaning I have no preference) for following my gut intuition to make a decision. After some reflection, I realized that I do sometimes have a gut feeling at the start of a problem or decision process. And occasionally after my exhaustive information gathering and emotional soul-searching, the conclusion I arrive at is in fact the one my gut told me at the start. Yet I cannot bring myself to trust my gut and just make a quick decision. As a future leader, I will need to work on improving this strategy so that I don’t frustrate my team with the time it takes for me to arrive at decisions.

Green was my lowest preference. It was actually by far the least prevalent operating system in the room. Out of the 30 or so people in the course, I believe there were only two people who showed a strong preference for green creative thinking. As a teacher of Dramatic Arts, a class where I work to foster and encourage creative thinking and taking time to explore during the creative process, I was upset that I scored so low in my preference for using creative strategies in my own life. I also thought with further reflection that the generally low scores among the 30 of us in this course might be a symptom of the school system and of our larger society. Many of us have seen Sir Ken Robinson’s TED Talk “How Schools Kill Creativity”. Taking the time to brainstorm, seeking alternative solutions or even alternative questions, envisioning new possibilities and scenarios – all of these strategies are often discouraged in favour of taking decisive action and moving forward with initiatives. As a future leader, I need to remember to practice what I preach to my Drama students (and to my students in my other courses for that matter) and take time to explore and experiment, as well as encouraging my team to do so.

Finally, after hearing from my fellow yellows as well as the greens and reds in the room, the importance of shared, team-based leadership (one of my personal goals from my post-session 1 reflection) really sunk in. Successful leadership would come from a team of leaders, each with slightly different preferences, who could bring a balanced approach to challenges.

Now I’d like to hear from you – for anyone else who has done the 4D-i assessment: What were your results? Did you feel that they accurately described your operating style? How are you using your knowledge of your preferences to affect how you approach problems or how you work on a team? For anyone who hasn’t done the assessment: What colour do you think is your preference? Are you a warm emotional thinker, or a cool logical thinker? Which colour preference do you think would be the best for an effective leader to have? Do you see any other advantages or disadvantages to each colour preference? I’m looking forward to your comments.

Why Leadership Now? Reflections on My First Session of Leadership 1

12 Wednesday Nov 2014

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cross-panel connections, goals, growth mindset, leadership, professional learning network, reflection, shared leadership

Going into my first night of Leadership 1 through HWDSB, I honestly had no idea what to expect. The facilitators had shared some documents electronically prior to the session that I perused, as well as a list of the groups we would be working in for the duration of the course. Upon first glance, I almost felt disappointed or unsure about my group, as there was only one other secondary teacher, and my group facilitator was to be an elementary principal. My first reaction was worry – would my interactions in this group be relevant enough for my situation? But I took a step back and realized my bias. Cross-panel relationships and connections could be so fruitful and interesting to enrich my perspective, and it is an area in my personal practice that I have not yet truly explored.

I ran with this idea when I arrived at the session and we were asked to contemplate our intentions in registering for this course. Looking around the room, I was easily one of, if not the youngest teacher in the room. So why would a teacher in only her sixth year in the profession be sitting in this course? Here are some of my responses to the questions of Why Leadership? and Why Leadership Now?

1) Networking

Beginning with joining Twitter in October 2012, I have been striving to build a strong PLN. Through the face-to-face contacts made in this leadership course, I can diversify my PLN with cross-panel and system connections.

2) Informal Leadership Roles

I have engaged in some informal leadership roles over my first few years of teaching. I have participated on committees for Numeracy and AER, and I have facilitated PD sessions with small groups and with a whole staff. I am hoping to find more of these opportunities and learn how to better engage other colleagues in the process.

3) Experimenting with Shared Leadership

Coordinated, shared leadership is part of the strategic directions of the HWDSB, and it is a skill that I know that I personally need to further develop. I had several roles as a student leader in university, and as stated above, I have engaged in some informal leadership as a teacher, but my comfort zone is individual leadership. I grew up much preferring to work alone than with others. However, collaboration and working within a team of leaders is essential and is part of today’s educational reality. I hope that through my experiences in this course I can reorient my preference towards shared , team-based leadership.

I am certain that with further reflection I would generate more responses to this question of Why Leadership? , but I landed on the above reasons at the end of my first session. To really address my second question, Why Leadership Now? , I think I would reply that because as a student, I was almost always in leadership positions, and it has felt unusual, and dare I say unnatural, to not be in consistent leadership roles as a professional.

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Recent Posts

  • To Westdale’s Class of 2016
  • My Favourite – Getting Students Talking to Each Other about Math #MTBoS Week 2
  • One Day at a Time: #MTBoS Week 1 Post
  • Staying Inside the Lines: Reflections on Learning from my Adult Colouring Book
  • How do we teach culture?

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  • November 2014
  • August 2013
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