Leadership Compass Self Assessment

Write a Blog Post in which you reflect on the results and what they reveal about the kind of teacher leader/advocate you have the capacity to be. Consider strengths, challenges, and areas for growth associated with your leadership tendencies.

My Leadership Compass Self Assessment Kind of put me evenly across the board – I don’t look like I lean too hard to one direction of anything. I had one extra point in Emotion/Empathy (South).

I think that that is a great thing in terms of being able to relate to students and be able to support them in a way other than being an academic, by the text book teacher. I do however, think that that can be hindering as well, both to myself and my students in a way. being overly empathetic, I tend to take things and problems to heart and home with me, and that isn’t healthy in the long run. I need to make sure that I keep that distance of teacher – student relationships rather than being too much in those situations, especially when I’m younger in the classroom.

What’s your 3-foot “circle of Influence”?

https://onbeing.org/blog/sharon-salzberg-your-three-feet-of-influence/

Think about all you’re learning in the badge you’re pursuing at the moment. In relation to that knowledge, what impact is actually within your reach as a beginning teacher? Who do you want to be as you make your way through the world? Set some intentions to become a teacher who will make a positive impact in the lives of students and colleagues, within the profession, and beyond.

There are so many things in the Teacher as Advocate badge that are relevant to my three foot circle of influence. So much of it is a long term thing – creating a culture of care leads to the sense of trust and support. However, a good beginning is Love. Like Shannon said in ther UGP, this specific sense of Love is so so important in the classroom.

I want to be a person that is important to other people because of who I am. I want to make a difference in people’s lives and be able to give that love and be able to mean that I did or am something that other people remember and are grateful for.

On an non- prompted note, I love the three-foot-circle Idea. I think that being aware of it is such a good thing and wish more people would recognize it. That being said, our influence reaches so much farther than three feet! Both the idea of the hypothetical three feet and literal. What we do in out classrooms is our three feet, but then what our students do is their three feet, but our six feet. This butterfly chain reaction means that slowly we could have an influence 60 feet away. And I think that’s the most important impact, ever.

Afternoon Pages: Pose, Wobble, Flow: Redux

• For homework you already wrote about the badge you’ve selected and why you chose it. You can think of these reflections as your pose. → Now that you’ve actually started working on your badge, how are you wobbling with the ideas and the activities of the badge and/or the identity the badge is helping you grow into? → Based on your completion of your last badge, what strategies can you use to work your way toward flow?

I’m beginning to wobble with the ideas as a really I don’t know where to start. Objectively this is easy as there is literally a checklist, however, I tend to be one of those people who has an issue in feeling overwhelmed and just shut down – completely unable to do anything and can’t break things down to compartmentalize. I’m really struggling with just where to go with this as of right now. I want to work towards being able to do things in a timely manner and use that to hopefully reach a flow. I think that something that will be helpful is going to be able to explore different issues and challenges – Hopefully that can help me reach a little bit of a better flow, just by being more knowledgeable on different subjects/issues, so that way I feel like I flounder less.

Afternoon Pages: No Vulnerability, No Learning

In her video “Daring Classrooms,” Brené Brown uses the phrase “no vulnerability, no learning.” Think about at least one space that has allowed you to thrive as a learner (and this doesn’t have to be a classroom). What conditions were in place that allowed you and others to take positive risks for learning? What did those spaces look like and sound like? What did it feel like to be a learner in that space? If it’s not too much of a stretch, write about any connections you see between the ideas you’re writing about and the badge you’re currently pursuing. 

A place that I felt that I could thrive as a learner? Probably my old bakery job. The owner was one of my best friends, and I had worked for her at a different company for years, so there was a lot of trust she had in me. Because of that, it meant that she valued my opinion and trusted me to be able to make choices (and/or risks). Having that level of freedom she let me constantly have with all of my choices and operations was both good and bad – the ability for me to thrive and take risks as a learner was great because I could see what worked and what didn’t, but also was able to not be limited in being forced to do anything any one way. The other hand was that having that freedom of being able to take risks meant someties failing, and that’s hard not to beat yourself up over and have your little Shame Sheild to try and cope with it. Overall though, being able to take those risks and having them work and having more options and oppertunities to learn rather than doing things the same way every time was freeing in a way, but helped me flourish as an unrestricted learner.

Teacher as Researcher Badge

• why this badge interests you : The Teacher as Researcher badge interests me because of the ability to learn methods and learn how they work and how sucessful they are, as well as being able to implement them in the classroom. I think that having these in my toolbox od skills and of methods will be extremely helpful in the future, as well as needed.
• why/how you think it will be useful in your development as a teacher right now: I think that being able to have methods and multiple ways of learning and coming at a problem is important, and that we as teachers, as people, and as students need these methods as new ways to experience teaching. Teaching now is in need of an upgrade, and this is a start towards a new way of learning.
• how you hope the knowledge and experiences you gain from completing the badge will serve you in your own classroom later: I hope that doing this badge is going to be able to fill up my toolbox with ideas and different methods of research and teaching, leaving me with more tools to be able to use and able to impliment successfully.

Taking Care of Yourself Comes First / An Update on “4-Year Traditional Degrees”

This blog post is going to be a lot more an unloading ramble of me thinking through things in writing than a blog post, but figure it counts towards five hundred words if I post it and talk about the school system, right?

In my post about traditional 4 year degrees, I mentioned that I was considering an alternate path rather than just busting ass for the next 3 years. I have decided that at least for next semester, I am definitely not coming back to CSU as a full time student. I have not decided whether I want to come back and only take maybe one class and see how that goes, or just take the semester off as a whole. But it is a start to figuring everything out. And even that is a slight load off my chest.

I feel like students forget to take care of themselves in regards to having school. Like how many all nighters are really healthy for a 20 year old anyway? Yet we all talk about it like that is a normal thing. And it is, it happens all the time. People skip a class to do work for another class. Which is a lot. I know too many stressed burnt out students who are just absolutely toasted and just don’t care anymore. Hell, I’m one of them.

This semester has been rough, to say the least for me. There has been a lot of personal and emotional circumstances that have just really wrecked me. I have been going to the Grizzly Rose a lot to blow off steam line dancing, which is probably one of the more healthy habits I do. At this point, it is like the only time that I actually feel like I am living rather than just going through motions to get to tomorrow.

Afternoon Pages: The Song That Gets Me Through.

I love music. As far as songs that get me through, I really have 2. (I have a million, but I’ll pick two that really really resonate with me right now.)

“Take me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver is one of my favorite songs ever. 1 because its one of those songs that just relaxes your soul. But more specifically because of my definition of home. Home is not four walls and a door that you never walk out of, but a place where you feel like you belong. And that’s something I have really felt since I moved, is that I feel like I belong.

“Gonna put the world away for a minute/ pretend I don’t live in it./ Sunshine gonna wash my blues away,”

The opening lines of Knee Deep by Zac Brown Band have really been resonating with me lately. This semester has been really rough on me, and I feel like I’ve needed to have a lot of moments where I just need to put everything away and let the sun sit on my skin and breathe. Which is sometimes hard to do! Always, really. It’s hard and frusterating. But sometimes just putting everythign to the side for a second is what you need.

“Sunrise, there’s a fire in the sky/ Never been so happy never felt so high/ And I think I might have found me my own kind of paradise.”

Afternoon Pages: Dear Vincent

“I long so much to make beautiful things. But beautiful things require effort and disappointment and perseverance.” 

~ VINCENT VAN GOGH

Write an open letter to Vincent Van Gogh, describing your experiences in writing your UGP. Tell him about your efforts and your disappointments. Ask him for advice on how to persevere. As a fellow artist, conclude your letter by proclaiming the step you will take next, right now today, to progress toward making your UGP into a “beautiful thing.”

Dear Vincent – Writing this is hard. I’ve barely started a draft and I’m already super uncomfortable. I have no idea what I’m doing, let alone what I’m supposed to be doing. Or what even I’m supposed to be writing here in this afternoon pages. I just feel like this whole thing is just another mess. Even just writing this is a stressed out point – less mess that I have no idea where to go. I have seven minutes to write to you and my mind is just completely blank.

(https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0031V1962)

Rough Draft UGP

An (aggressively) rough draft of my newspaper article, in which I seem to demonstrate that I don’t really know how to write newspaper articles and that I have no Idea where it is headed.

Teachers who enjoy their jobs and care about their student’s well being generally have students that retain more information and have more academic success. Teachers that like teaching tend to reach their students better, in addition to having those students retain and remember information presented to them. In a personal poll, out of a class of 32 Horticulture students, 29 of them said that they had had a teacher that they felt like didn’t like teaching. Out of these 29, 25 of them didn’t feel like they really learned anything from that past teacher. Alvarez (2002) reported on the establishment of a grade 6–12 charter school by the University of California–San Diego for under-represented groups. He stated that the curriculum should be designed to address student motivation and engagement by focusing on teaching for understanding. That is, when students are engaged, they are more likely to learn (Alvarez 2002). Jamie Escalante, a teacher in East Los Angeles who structured a program to help minority children learn math,  refused to accept the idea that these and other youth could not overcome past educational instances where teachers did not care enough to help out a student. Rather, he thought that if these students were taught by a teacher who cared about their job and about their students, they could eventually pass advanced college placement tests, and sure enough they did (Escalante and Dirmann 1990).

Afternoon Pages: Play by Your Own Rules.

What are your rules for working toward flow as a writer? How will you enact them right now, today, as you work on your Teacher As Writer badge? How do you help yourself just “shut up and get on with it”?

My rules for working towards flow? I’m …not really sure. I think I just have that “shut up and get on with it” attitude (or attempt to). I think I just end up analyzing and trying not to overthink anything. Not like wobbling overthinking, but just the complete over the top like overthinking thinking?

Can you tell I can’t think in a straight line today?

I think I just end up telling myself to “shut up and get on with it” by shutting down. Which isn’t the best ‘rule/practice” or whatever. It’s kind of just a not thinking forced thing. I think that’s something I need to work on as a whole, is making those rules in an actual sense rather than just shutting off and autopiloting. Because while that is a flow, it is certainly not a healthy flow at all. Or can it even be called a flow? Is that just an inbetween flow? Or like a little trickle? This analogy is falling apart the more I’m trying to mess w it.

This afternoon pages isn’t really answering any of these questions, but in all honesty I’m not sure how to answer them at all.