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.

Category: Relationship

  • Motivation, feedback, tech, and me.

    The ‘and me’ is key. This is in reference to me as a teacher and therefore a creator of learning situations.

    How do I use myself as a motivating instigator with those I teach?

    motivation_bathing
    Made lovingly with the GIMP and SweetClipArt

    How do I provide effective feedback to those I teach?

    feedback_loop
    source: Gamification and Motivation: Tapping into psychology by Chloe Della Costa

    How do I recognize the feedback I receive from those I teach, from my colleagues, from other professionals?

    Feedback_in_Disguise
    source: Recognizing Feedback in Disguise by Trev

    How do I mobilize technology when I teach, motivate, and provide or receive feedback?

    opportunity_capacity_motivation_circles
    source: Sustaining Rather than Sustainable ICT4E by James BonTempo


    These are all big questions but this is not a blog post about providing pat answers to those questions. They are ongoing questions and the answers may should change as I work with different (groups of) learners.

    Essentially, I need to create situations where these questions are present, in the foreground. Situations where these questions create a framework for learning.

    This week, I am examining the creation of Personalized Systems of Instruction (PSI) and specifically how Wix, Weebly, CamStudio, MERLOT, and Hot Potatoes could facilitate learning situations based on PSI (see here how PSI is used by Rocco Iafigliola in a Quebec CollegePhysics classroom).

    Those questions will remain at the front line while I test out each of those resources. In the meantime, I have sent out a tweet for user experience…

    psi_tweet
    source: Tweeted on Jan. 13.
    Click here to view tweet + responses.

    …to be continued :)

  • Flipping videos all over the place aka what is a true flip?

    Does flipped learning, flipped classroom, flipped ________, have to always be about replacing content with video? Because, let me tell you, that’s what I seem to be seeing and it is driving me CRAZY that I am constantly being referred to video.

    I like to learn via text. Via lists. Poetry. Words. I like to read.

    Replacing content with a video is not reforming education. It is wrapping it with a different bow.

    What excites me about learning, what I find novel, inspiring, and full of hope has to do with the spark of relationship between teachers and students. Between different members of a school community. Once there is caring – true caring for our students as learners, as people, magic can and does happen.

    (Now, that’s a flip.)

    Just replacing content with a video version of it doesn’t.

  • Teacher as container

    I remember reading an article some years back called Consultant as Container***, or something like that. It spoke about how an organizational consultant can play a role in ‘holding’ the emotion in the room during periods of change and that this act of holding can assist in allowing the change to continue.

    A teacher’s work is very much like this. So is that of a consultant who works with teachers. During the school year, I am generally exhausted by the end of a day and never any more so than during exam periods (man, do I hate exam periods. They are too often taken way too seriously by everyone (but mainly educators…) and result in way too much stress).

    I find myself interacting with nervous students (and teachers) and definitely gathering in their emotion so as to let them focus on getting through. It’s like all of a sudden we delve into an alternate universe where all that matters is getting that paper done, finishing that exam. Of course, and especially in adult education, that isn’t all that matters. Students exist outside of their papers and exams. They have families, jobs, and who knows what else to have to manage on top of the difficult emotions surrounding schooling and exams.

    It generally takes me two weeks after the end of any given school year to feel rested. I know I am not alone in that. Emotion is exhausting. It is also such an important part of what we do when we work with our students, our colleagues, our school communities.

    —

    * A side note — wouldn’t it be a good idea if, instead of having to deal with the intense emotion surrounding examination periods we found a different way to examine?

    ** In looking through my blog, I realize this is not the first time I write about this…. See Holding Emotion.

    *** In case you are interested, I found that article I referred to at the start:
    Consultant as Container: Assisting organizational rebirth in Mandela’s South Africa by Smith, Miller, and Kaminstein in Journal of Applied Behavioral Science June 2003 vol. 39 no. 2 145-168

  • Flashback: seeking to understand

    This post was originally written in 2009 and is still very relevant to me. I hope you think so as well.

    —

    If only humans had it this easy when it comes to understanding each other
    If only humans had it this easy when it comes to understanding each other

    A norm that I aspire to, however difficult it can be at times is this one:

    Seek to understand before being understood.

    I just read a story about an administrator who practices this norm.

    From Karen S. about a Kindergarten student in trouble in Talking Him Off the Ledge at Talkworthy:

    “In a few minutes, he got the idea that I wasn’t there to make his day more miserable but that I was genuinely trying to understand him.”

    She described the encounter between herself and the child as magical. I felt the magic as I read her words. Karen is a true leader. Go read the whole story. It’s a story worth listening to, sharing, and believing.

    “We are responsible not only for the stories we tell and the stories we listen to, but for the stories we choose to believe.” ~Thomas King

  • A more appropriate method

    When a student complains about his teacher’s less than motivational teaching style, his school board replies that he did not complain appropriately.

    How can he complain? What outlet do students have to express their concerns about their teachers? What is a more appropriate method?

    If they are lucky they have found an adult at their establishment that they can confide in but even then…they are being heard but what is being done?

    People (in schools) do not like to hear complaints about teachers. A public school teacher is still very untouchable.

    University courses and professional development sessions always end with time for anonymous feedback to be given via evaluation forms. What if we did that in public schools? An evaluation form could certainly be adapted for different levels.

    Could this help change teaching practices that don’t touch our students hearts?