October 21-22 Session RECAP

Fridays session on all the laws involved in education and Saturdays school discipline section make me cringe to become a leader. I can handle the instruction, management, and personnel, but when it comes to disciplining students and dealing with negative parents I want to run and hide under the covers. Dealing with teacher or staff personnel issues don’t scare me as much as dealing with students and parents that lie all the time. Oh wait I need to assume best intentions.

I really enjoyed Dr. Hauser’s lesson on effective meetings and appreciate her bringing back the agendas we had to create in her EAD 172 class. Most of the faculty meetings at my school are unproductive and do not accomplish the goals they are set to. My department meetings are much better but I like how an effective meeting should have involvement from everyone versus the meetings I go to where only one person does all the talking, most of which I’ve already read in the executive advisory minutes. I believe I’m going to use a consensus-gram like chart for my project in some form.

FRISK seems like an easy way to remember how to fill out a letter of reprimand, we’ll see how I feel when I have to turn it in.

Chapter 6 - TRUST

Sorry this post is late ladies...

Trust really is the most important and valuable leadership connector but as the book says it’s the hardest to achieve and can take time. My leader has potential to earn everyone’s trust but currently I don’t believe she is capable of make some hard decisions. Like letting certain personnel go or switching someone’s job if they are an ineffective leader. I gave my principal two years of caution before deciding what kind of leader she was and right now she’s in the positive relationship building category that lacks the rigor and discipline necessary to produce better academic results.

                                                             

I would say I’m personally a trustworthy person but in reality I know there are times when I like to gossip or complain to others. If I decide to go into a leadership position I’m going to have to watch what I’m saying and keep it positive instead of whining about this or that. I will also need to avoid spreading gossip and stick to the facts or hard evidence. Being a leader always comes down to the evidence collected.

Chapter 5 - CONTINUOUS RENEWAL

When I first saw the title of this chapter I thought it was going to be about staying up to date on current education practices and teaching instruction but it turned out to be more about reflecting. One of the best pieces of advice is to be reflective and not reactive during a stressful situation. I definitely envy those people that can be diplomatic in every situation. There are leaders on campus that just seem to have the politically correct answer for situations where I want to tell someone to bugger off! For me this will be a challenging lesson, but I’m learning how to hold my tongue before I speak and think about an answer that doesn’t commit one direction over another but keeps me neutral. To be honest this is another reason why I’m still not sure if administration is for me, because I like being able to speak my mind. Sometimes the political diplomatic answer just seems fake.

Twitter Anyone?

I'm not seeing a lot of action on twitter, but it's a pretty cool tool... I've just set up an account for my softball team to send out updates for the team so I don't have to give my number out to everyone, I'm testing it out right now. Just wanted to share with my groupie here since this is where I first started twitter

Chapter 4 - COMPETENCE

Sometimes I become my biggest enemy with my self-doubt. I struggle with self-esteem issues and sometimes when people criticize me I just fall apart. I’m working on becoming more self-assured which has not been an easy road and I constantly fall back into old patterns of not feeling worthy. I really envy people who have an unbreakable self-confidence because for me it’s something I struggle with every day of my life. I like how this chapter outlines the different categories because it helps me think about my current skills level. I need to work on being more socially competent because while I can talk with people and hold a conversation sometimes I hold myself back from talking with people in fear of what will come out of my mouth. I also like how this chapter talks about reflecting and analyzing your practice. As much as I disliked BTSA when I was in the program the reflections you are forced to do were the most powerful lessons. I still try to reflect on my practices to continually grow and improve my teaching. The other thing I like about this chapter is the statement about you will make mistakes but how you react and handle the mistakes will show your competence in a situation. So when I make a mistake I need to acknowledge it and learn from it so it doesn’t happen again.