An 0 for 4 weekend means there is no need to say much about football. The Bears played well enough to win as did the Seahawks, but couldn't score touchdowns when they both had multiple red zone chances. The college teams scored for once, but neither made it a game.
This is a short week with Veteran's Day on Tuesday, but it is filled with teacher leadership training for me on both Wednesday and Thursday. I also have the opportunity to share something from the district at Friday morning's Rotary meeting. Planning for one of the leadership days is complete as it is a repeat of an earlier day with a different group. Connie and I have made changes following the first day experience to create a heightened focus on the need for a "meaty" goal to guide the teams' efforts.
I haven't been able, however, to finish my contribution to day 2. As always, there is too much to share in the time available and we are struggling with the need to balance process and product. The mornings are designed for learning with the afternoons set aside for the teams to work on their goal. Both sessions are predominately discussion so there is not enough product work for some in the room.
Connie and I have a deep belief in the need to develop a communication and facilitation knowledge base and skill set to influence the quality of the product and problem solving work, but we need to create a better balance during our morning activities. We believe that we may be talking at the participants too much and need them to engage more often with us and with each other. If you are part of one of the leadership teams, please share your thoughts about this dilemma.
4 comments:
I certainly don't have a magic bullet for this conundrum. I can tell you that I believe people are usually willing to set aside their discomfort around this one...they just have to be asked to do so. The trick is getting them to engage around the question genuinely and long enough (just 2 minutes!) to truly take the issue on board since so many go immediately into eye-roll mode as soon as the conversation about this issue begins. Just as our students are often willing to humor their teachers if they are asked to trust that what they are about to do they will recognize after the fact as having been helpful, adults are as well. Just like students, they just have to be reminded frequently what the goal is. There is the heart of what I'm thinking about. What steps will you and Connie be taking to make sure that the participants ALL agree to at least keep an open mind, to at least humor you? What steps will you and Connie be taking to make sure that the participants keep the big picture goal at the front of their brain at every minute of the day?
The leadership institute is valuable for both its training of processes and the time for product. While active learning strategies support the training in the morning, I am not sure a specific product needs to be a result of the morning.
The freedom to practice the skills learned that morning or in previous institutes is valuable as we work towards a product in the afternoon. This week, I think I want my team to reflect on the staff development plan for the year for both the building and departments, where we are and where we need to go with our remaining time.
Your comment "there is too much to share in the time available" just says it all! As Ethan points out so well... we are all asked often in education, as students, to listen longer than usually "acceptable", but with trust in our instructors (you have long since established that), and reminders about the goals of and importance of what we are learning, we all ought to be able to handle some extended moments of direct instruction. (In fact, there are plenty of folks that prefer that method.) The 45 minutes you spoke was jammed packed and I would have been very hard pressed to pick what should have been left out to make room for a different model.
Finally, though our team had some struggles and will reflect on them, there is no question that growth occured on many fronts. (the point of the day, right?)
Sometimes I feel very alone in my thoughts that I'd rather be doing than listening in situations with peer educators. This is why I often try to accept opportunities to listen for an extended period of time as growing opportunties.
But in the interest of being completely honest, I think that if I were asked to trust in listening I would of course do it, but I still probably wouldn't like it. I am a very goal-oriented person and if I can't see/touch/feel the progress I'm making towards a goal then I feel like I'm wasting my time.
I think that the morning of the LI was interesting and informative, yet still a bit of a repeat of things I heard at the last institute--maybe this is only because it was the first meeting. The evening was so much talk and our group in particular talked in many cicles and didn't even conclude what our goal was. That was the frustrating part for me--I felt like the "product time" had no product.
As Connie pointed out to me at the end of the meeting, it's hard for some people to slow down and spend an adaquate time processing but rather like to get to the solving (that's me) and that we need to fully understand the problem before we start solving it. I understand this is an area I need to work on, but that doesn't mean the process doesn't feel a bit painful--though I've come to believe sometimes processes have to be painful for us to get the most out of them.
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