Leading From The Heart

by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.

Author: Tracy Rosen

  • Professional Development – some questions and thoughts

    Part of my job, no. Most of my job has me thinking about Professional Development. Today it has me wondering about how much others think about it.

    As a teacher, how much importance do you place on PD? Is it something you do because it is part of your yearly schedule or is it something you actively seek out and want a say in?

    ed_act_teachers_obligations

    The Quebec Education act tells us that we need to maintain a high level of professionalism – what does that mean to you? And does it mean the same for all of us?

    It also says that we are required to be involved in the training and mentoring of new teachers. How are we helped in that area? What does this look like?

    My bias is that PD is our tether line. It is what can keep us connected to others and to our own growth as we navigate the cliff sides of the ever changing classroom context.

    How would you describe it?

  • On gardening and understanding

    When I garden I want to tear my hair out along with the weeds and grass at times because there just seems to be so much to pull to let the plants I love to breathe and shine.

    image

    My first inclination could be to just pull haphazardly but I’ve noticed that if I patiently allow my hands to travel to the root of what it is I want to suss out, then a gentle tug is enough to remove a whole tangle of unwanted grass and weeds.

    Understanding why and locating where is enough to tend to just about any garden.

  • Hope for the future. My dilemma.

    My driving force has always been hope for the future. That everything I do is buttressed by this incredible hope for the future. Indeed, that everything we do in education is held up by the same.

    There is a lot of talk about hope lately. There has to be because some pretty hope-less events are happening.

    Men are being killed for the colour of their skin and their killers are not being punished for the colour of theirs.

    Women are lost/missing/disregarded for their ties to the land.

    Children are dying for a difference in matrilineal lineage.

    If we look at the comments to almost any article written about these events, the situations seem even more dire.

    My dilemma is that I place hope in the future. Or towards the future. So today I question: must hope always refer to the future?

    If I focus on hope, do I deny the good being done today, for today?

    As educational leaders – and to this I include teachers, consultants, administrators, support staff – we need to lead our learners to find the actions and events infused with hope that are happening in the present.

    #NMOS14
    #JewsandArabsRefuseToBeEnemies
    #IdleNoMore

    I. Hope.
    Now.

    #leadershipday14

  • so. technology is not the goal. what is?

    Playing with Coggle, which I read about on Avi Spector’s blog, Beyond the Tools. Pretty neat little thinking tool.

  • A Lesson from Robin

    Facebook and, I imagine, Twitter exploded today with the news of Robin Williams’ death. I found myself touched more than with other celebrity deaths. Rumours, still rumours, say that it was at his own hand. That depression was a factor. It’s public knowledge that he had problems with drugs.

    I did not know the man other than through his brilliant performances. But all of that – possible depression, struggles with addiction, and constant performance – make me think of some of the students I have had the great pleasure of meeting over the years. Students who always seem to take up too much space in a room. There’s a reason for it. The more space you take up, the farther you can keep people away.

    It’s easier to build strong children than rebuild broken men, or something like that.

    As teachers, as people, we are humanely obligated to build strong children. It’s part of a continual process of creating hope for the future.

    I hold on to that hope.