Activity 2 of our last part of our journey through the digital entity that is Mindlab asks us to look at our practice within the context of the Key Competencies.
When I first read that I would need to reflect on my practice in relation to the key competencies I immediately felt the shadow of my professional development coach sitting on my shoulder. The shudder that is PD Friday and what is expected from us in an every demanding environment of teaching came to the forefront of my mind. The reality that I would need to revisit this as part of my university course in my 'free' time made me feel that I was extending my working week to seven days. In review it is of course what we do as part of our daily lives, looking at our practice, albeit not consciously but it is there. It is what we expect our students to do thinking, managing self, relating to others........the list goes on, so why shouldn't it be part of what we, as educators, do?
My journey to this point was from my uncontrollable urge to not miss out on anything. I had just taken on the challenge of becoming an e-Mentor for our department and when I heard about the exciting new opportunity of post graduate study I jumped at the chance. I knew I was already pushing my time limitations between home life of three children, teaching, a house dean and coaching but still the urge overtook my reservations.
As enjoyment of the first few weeks of the course unfolded we began to look at our own practice and where our strengths and weaknesses lay. One activity was to look at key competencies in leadership and to fill out a form . From this I felt my strengths lay in thinking, relating to others and participating and contributing.Thinking - I feel I do this everyday, by reflecting on how well/not so well my lessons went, reflecting on conversations I've had and listening to student voice and how my teaching reflects in my students learning. So what is good thinking? Is it accurate and coherent thinking (Lipman, 2003) or is it creative and imaginative thinking? To me it is a consistent approach to reflecting on thoughts, actions and conversations that I have engaged in throughout the day.
Relating to others - I believe that if we, as leaders, do not facilitate a positive relationship with our students then how can we guide them throughout their learning journey? Letting the students know that they are valued as an individual and not just a number within our classroom is, in my opinion, an important interpersonal quality that all teachers should possess.
Participating and contributing - Throughout the course at MindLab we have been encouraged to collaborate in assignments with our fellow classmates. Although I did not achieve this for the majority of my submissions, I did collaborate with a former colleague, to complete two assignments. From this collaboration I found that although it was a difficult alignment due to both having very busy schedules, we did complete this very well. It forced us to work remotely via Google Docs and after jointly reflecting on the process we found that we thoroughly enjoyed the experience. Desire Truter is a English teacher at a low decile school and I am and Physical Education and Health teacher at a high decile school. Whilst we were bringing different experiences to the table we found that the solutions to our problems were very interlinked. In fact from conversations with lecturers we were discouraged to collaborate on our project but this instead pushed us into making it work. Our markers comments were:
"It is a really interesting approach to take two very different school contexts and to identify common problems between them that you wish to address. The problems that you identify, of lack of attendance, lack of punctuality and lack of motivation, are very important and are certainly worth trying to address."
As educational leaders we are always encouraging our students to collaborate with others in their learning journey, from this activity I found that I was 'walking the talk' and able to discuss these ideas with my students. The feeling of unease when reliance on another to get good grades, the possibility of finishing in preparation for a deadline was thought provoking but it worked. We achieved good grades and in the process we entrusted our outcome on another. We learnt to work remotely and to come together without 'taking over' in our writing. Suggestions by (Limbu & Markauskaite, 2015) were that some felt embarrassed and inadequate when their writings became visible to others. This is certainly how I felt collaborating with an English teacher!
So my weaknesses when it comes to Key Competencies ? I feel that I need to utilize language, symbols and texts more into my practice. Although when I look at this further, I see that this is already developing in my practice through the increase in ICT within my lessons. Through the increase in variation in activities following listening to student voice my weaker key competency may in fact become my strength.
Limbu, L.,
& Markauskaite, L. (2015). How do learners experience joint writing:
University students’ conceptions of online collaborative writing tasks and
environments. Computers and Education, 82, 393–408.
http://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2014.11.024
Lipman, M.
(2003). Thinking in Education Second Edition.
http://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511840272
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