Week #5 in CEDO 656

This week we finished up years 2 and 3 in our change simulation.  It was funny that we had such problems in year 1 since once we started going the simulation became easier and easier. Our team made decisions at a faster rate and the benefits came rolling in. Overall the simulation was fun and highlighted the need for transparent communication when it comes to getting a group to undergo a large systematic change.

We also finished the book “How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader.” By John G Gabriel.  The last chapter was all about how to increase achievement for both teachers and students.  If I had to summarize the chapter in a sentence it would be “Lead from the front”.  A teacher leader must be the one to show WHY a change is useful in order to get their group to go along with it.  This is often lost on some leaders in the educational setting since it means that you are infinitely more vulnerable as a leader than as a member of the group.  You need to put yourself out there if you want to be the one in charge.

Lastly, I would just like to say that all of the group work we have done in this course has been very enlightening. If you have a group of people who are all positive and task focused then your can accomplish great things.  I have been very fortunate to be a part of some great groups and it has been awesome to see the good interactions we have been reading and talking about modeled so successfully.

Week#4 in CEDO 565

This week we ran the first week of a simulation in creating change in a school. We acted as administration trying to effect an unknown change upon a whole district.  We had to use up resources to get the staff on board with our proposed change.  After the simulated end of one year... we had not even begun to figure out what the change is that we are going to get our district to undergo.  I kind of feel like this is the way a lot of administration feels about us teachers.  They have great ideas, why won't us teachers just go along with it already :)  The frustration is good in that it serves a real purpose to show how we need to refine our ideas before presenting them to the larger group.

We also read some articles about the stages of change that will be very useful for next week's simulation.  The simulation that we are doing has the same parts that article: http://www.mcrel.org/toolkit/res/change.asp has and will be useful to use as road map in the coming game.

We also took a look at Motivation in Leadership and all of the different things that can make a department a more cohesive unit.  It featured a couple of good tidbits of advice from hosting socials to keeping observations to short "walkthroughs". It was a nice change of pace since the previous chapters were mostly concerned with conflict resolution.  I like that we now focused on the good things.

Week #3 In CEDO 565

Whoops! This is super late, but in week 3 of CEDO 565 we took a look at "Who Moved my Cheese" a parable about being adaptive to change and being capable of looking at the big picture. I thought that it was an interesting story, but I can see that it has the capability of being misused as a justification for administration for forcing arbitrary changes on a staff. The story does not make any prioritizing for the different topics that come up. This can cause quite a problem if you just keep on flitting from topic to topic and do not have any overall goal for what you are doing. If you want to see the breakdown of topics the powerpoint is available below:

Who Moved My Cheese

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We also took a look at systems thinking and how it could be applied to the educational system.  It is a great idea to value the interconnected nature of how students learn. Again, I only have a small reservation about systems thinking (much like my reservation about "Who Moved My Cheese".)  The system provides no mechanism for prioritizing items or learning more background that could be used to gain a deeper understanding.  I kind of liken it to standardized test preparation versus actual learning. With standardized test prep (and systems thinking) you only value that which is applicable to the moment.  With actual learning you need a much deeper understanding about how things work, not just how they are related.  Over all the presentations and videos were great items that spurred some rather deep conversations with my group mates and fellow teachers.