I'm an NTIP Mentor...Finally!

Seven years ago I felt like it was time to take a risk and put myself "out there" by making it known that I wanted to be a mentor to newer teachers. I remember finishing up my teacher performance appraisal and telling my Vice Principal that I was feeling good about my development and that I wanted to be considered as a potential mentor for new teachers. My VP agreed and let me know that he would make some calls about my interest.

Unfortunately, he was told that they didn't require any mentors at that time. I never stopped looking into it. A couple of years later I asked about it again and was told that mentees got to choose their mentor so if I wasn't contacted then I wouldn't be a mentor. Last year I found myself having a conversation with a consultant working within the New Teacher Induction Program (NTIP) who told me that the system for recruiting mentors would be changing. She was correct, a few months later there was a call for mentors and I put my name forward to be considered.

It took seven years but I am really happy (and feel privileged) to say that I am now an NTIP Mentor! A list was put together and I was contacted by two teachers who will be going through the NTIP this school year. I am excited to have the opportunity to build a positive relationship with other colleagues and offer them advice/guidance about the awesome work we engage in on a daily basis.

Looking through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework, the opportunity to participate in the NTIP allows me to assist in building relationships and developing people, developing the organization to support desired practises, and improving the instructional program. The opportunity to work on a variety of leadership expectations while formally supporting the growth of others who are relatively new to the profession is welcome.

Aside from offering my perspective and experience to other teachers, I am looking forward to learning from them and seeing/hearing about the awesome things they do to improve their practise and the learning of their students. I look forward to blogging more about my experience as a mentor with respect to the Leadership Framework. This is only the beginning - I look forward to the journey that I am embarking on and the positive changes that come with/from it.

The Learning will be Epic - Leadership Perspective

The post that you will find below was posted on my other blog site a few weeks ago. What I want to do here is look at the Innovators Mindset through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework that I have been using as I reflect on my leadership journey.

I have not finished reading the book yet but I can already see how this #IMMOOC experience connects to the Leadership Framework in the following ways:

• Setting Directions
• Building Relationships
• Developing the Organization to Support Desired Practices 
• Improving the Instructional Program

Within each of the broad categories I listed above are specific expectations that I am connecting with as I read the book. It is quite the exercise to read the book for pleasure (my own interest) and for the purpose of assisting me on my leadership journey (my work life). Nevertheless, I believe that the learning that comes from the text will assist me in becoming a more effective leader around innovation and the evolution of what school is and how school leaders do their work. 

For example, if I drill down a bit using the Leadership Framework with respect to Setting Directions, there is a section dedicated to creating high expectations:

From my perspective, I am starting to see how the information in the text can assist me in working on meeting such expectations and this is just one simple example. Through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework, I am gaining an awareness of how being innovative can assist me in being an effective leader in my classroom and my school. I look forward to providing more of my insight as I continue to read the book.

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The post below is cross posted from the New Fluencies Blog (Sept 11, 2016):


The path that has led me to the #IMMOOC has been an interesting one. I'm hoping that it is an indication of the great learning that is to come. In June, some of my colleagues ( +Jessica Weber  and +Amy Shantz)  who were taking a course together, decided that they wanted to have a book study over the summer months. I read about it on Twitter and told them that I was interested. Next thing you know, I've got a copy of +George Couros' 'Innovators Mindset' book in my hands. However, that was not my first interaction with the text. Months before the local book club opportunity, I was part of a Voxer chat group (thanks to +Jennifer Casa-Todd)  about the book - where I got to interact with a variety of people from around the globe about their thoughts and experiences with respect to the Innovators Mindset. Even thought I hadn't read the book yet, I was blown away by the learning that was coming out of the chat.

While I was participating in the Voxer chat, I experienced something that I can still visualize today, with crystal clarity. I was at a meeting with a group of people above my pay grade (consultants, principals, and senior admin) and one of them had the book. You could tell that it was being used extensively - it had sticky notes falling out of it and it looked worn - great indicators of the value it held for this particular person. Anyhow, I engaged this person and told them that I was participating in the Voxer chat group about the book.  They began to share their learning with me and anyone listening to us could see and hear the passion with which this person was talking about their experience.

This next part is what has stuck with me over the past few months: this person said to another person (both of whom I respect and look up to) "If you're not learning, you're dying" and the response from the other person was "well, that would explain all the corpses I have been seeing lately!". Wow! That is when several things hit me. First, I thought, I need to get myself in gear and keep bumping up my learning journey. Second, I knew that I needed to put the Innovators Mindset book on my learning journey.

I started reading the book this summer and then I saw a tweet referring to a post that George wrote to see if people were interested in participating in an Innovators Mindset MOOC (Massive Online Open Course). I filled in the form and crossed my fingers that enough people would do the same so that George would proceed with his idea. I shared this opportunity with my District by posting it to our Google + page and told my close friends about it. You can imagine how happy I was when I found out that the MOOC would be running!

The Facebook Page for the MOOC is buzzing and people are posting links to their blog posts about joining the MOOC and what they hope to gain from it. I am looking forward to connecting with people, learning with them, and sharing my learning so I can establish an innovators mindset. I believe that it is worthy of making this mindset a habit. What I am loving so far is that we are already establishing an Innovators Mindset by trying new things and pushing ourselves in order to learn and grow in a way that we may not have experienced before. People are leveraging Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Voxer, and who knows what else to learn and connect.

The learning will be epic. Looking forward to connecting and growing with you.

My New Students and their FAMILIES are all Welcome!

It has been a busy summer of reflecting, learning, and planning. With the start of the new school year a little over a week away, my focus is on my classroom and the students that will be inhabiting it for the next 10 months.

Just the other day, I came across a great blog post by +Sue Dunlop entitled "How Do You Want Families to Feel on the First Day of School?". Her post got me thinking - wondering why I have not ever really considered the 'family' on the first day (or week for that matter) of school.

Coincidentally, I found myself chatting with +Stephen Hurley that day or the next, about this very topic. Stephen was kind enough to connect with me to be on my podcast to talk about his work in education and what motivates and inspires him to do the work that he does. During our conversation we talked about School and the family context within it. Stephen offered up some ideas on how we could create a more welcoming environment for the families that belong to our school communities. Our conversation led him to write his own blog post, "Back to School: The Family Context", where he writes about some of the ideas he spoke about on the podcast around some ways that the school context could overlap with the family context. After reading his post, I started thinking about how I could help overlap the contexts in my school community. The next day I spoke to my Principal about the conversation that Stephen and I had. I told her about the idea of being more deliberate about overlapping the family context at school and sent her the link to Stephen's blog post.

My hope is that we can establish a new tradition/norm in my school community that will further assist us in building trusting and productive relationships with parents. Looking at this through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework, overlapping the family context and the school context would allow us to do the following:

• demonstrate respect for parents by listening to their ideas, being open to those ideas, and genuinely considering their value
• demonstrate respect, care and personal regard for parents 
• create a school environment in which parents are welcomed, respected and valued as partners in their children’s learning
• demonstrate the type of leadership that parents can trust - confident, systematic and attentive 
• help develop staff commitment to engaging parents in the school
• encourage staff to adopt a broad view of parental engagement and encourage more parents to be involved

We say that our Catholic Schools are the heart of the community - I think that this would be one more way to strengthen the school community by acknowledging and celebrating the family context. I look forward to revisiting this topic to blog about what my school does towards making families feel like they are truly welcome once they pass the main office.

Tough Conversations - Revisited

Our most recent in-class leadership session was all about having difficult conversations and the tools needed (rapport, listening set asides, and pause/paraphrase) to assist with those conversations. We were assigned a "homework" activity that involved engaging in a difficult/necessary/courageous conversation at home or at work. After having our tough conversation, we were to communicate our experience to our course instructor by providing 5 sentences/keywords/mind map (or whatever we wish) to express ourselves.

I took some time to think about any situations at work that I needed to deal with. It didn't take very long before I decided who I needed to talk to and the topic of the conversation. After my tough conversation I emailed my course instructor with the following message:
______________________________________________________

Here are my 5 points with respect to a difficult/necessary conversation I had:

Anxiety provoking

Reflection

Action

Prepared for negative

Listened

One of the teachers at our school is new and I share lunch duty with her. It was around a duty issue. We get along and I would say that I have a good rapport with her. So when I talked to her about the issue I told her that I wanted to ask her something and perhaps provide some advice for future reference. I know she is sensitive so I didn't want to upset her - my intention was to inform her and let her know how her decisions were impacting me. It turned out to be good.
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My 5 words (I know that I used more than 5) reflect my experience. I felt anxious, I spent time reflecting on the situation and my feelings about what was going on, I acted by speaking to my colleague, I prepared myself for a negative reaction on her part (worst case scenario), and when she spoke I actually listened to her. From MY perspective, I think things went well. My next step is to figure out if things are ok on her end as well. This is something I am currently thinking about. Sometimes when you have tough conversations things go they way you planned but how is the other person feeling? I am going to look further into that aspect of these tough conversations. 

As I think about the tools needed to have difficult conversations, I have to say that the one that stands out for me the most is the one about rapport. The leadership framework for principals has a pillar (1/5th of the document) about building relationships and developing people. Upon further investigation, the pillar is all about the practices that build rapport and the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will make the practices useful and authentic.

Here is a closer look at the pillar and its expectations:

I look forward to continuing to work on the expectations in this pillar with the people I work with everyday. Moreover, I look forward to looking into the other side of tough conversations and examine what it means for things to "good" on both sides of the conversation.  

My Goals and Learning Through the Lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework

With Leadership Part 3 underway, I have been preparing for my first meeting with each of my mentors. We were given the opportunity to suggest names of administrators that we were interested in job shadowing. I knew that I wanted to shadow a relatively new VP and Principal. I also wanted to work with an administrator in a large school and one in a small to medium sized school. Fortunately, I have been assigned to the two administrators that I had asked to be paired with. I am excited to meet with them and to learn from them.

As I prepare for my initial meetings, I have been reflecting on my goals for this portion of the program. For my first meeting with my mentors, I have been thinking about my goals and my plan for continuous learning, growth, and improvement. Through the lens of the Catholic Leadership Framework, I am provided with direction on what I would like to learn more about and be exposed to. I'm also working through the idea of having certain goals with each administrator so that I can allow them to go deep in a particular area. 

Here is what I have so far in terms of my goals/learning around the Leadership Framework:

Improving the Instructional Program

• Buffering staff from distractions to their work
• Catholic school leaders: create and enforce consistent, school-wide discipline policies 
• minimize daily disruptions to classroom instructional time 
• implement a systematic procedure for deciding how best to respond to initiatives from outside the school 
• develop, with staff, guidelines to govern the amount of time teachers spend on non-instructional and out-of-school activities
• regularly assess the contribution of all out-of-classroom activities to the learning priorities of students 

Essentially, my goal around improving the instructional program is to learn how my mentors deal with the possible "distractions" to their staff/school. I have an idea but I want to see/hear what their best practice might be.

Securing Accountability

• Building staff members’ sense of internal accountability Catholic school leaders
• regularly engage staff in analyzing data on the learning progress of all students
• insist on the use of data that is of high quality (reliable, valid, collected using systematic collection processes, available in its original form, and has been subjected to collaborative interpretation
• promote collective responsibility and accountability for student achievement and well-being
• help staff make connections between school goals and ministry goals in order to strengthen commitment to school improvement efforts
• assess their own contributions to school achievements and take into account feedback from others on their performance
• participate actively in their own performance appraisal and make adjustments to better meet expectations and goals
• ensure ongoing adult faith formation that addresses internal faith development  

• Meeting the demands for external accountability Catholic school leaders
• clearly define accountability for individual staff in terms that are mutually understood and agreed to and that can be rigorously reviewed and evaluated
• measure and monitor teacher and leader effectiveness using data about changes in student achievement
• align school goals with board and provincial goals
• provide an accurate and transparent account of the school’s performance to all school stakeholders (e.g., ministry, board, parents, and the Catholic community)
• create an organizational structure that reflects the Catholic school’s values and enables management systems, structures and processes to work effectively within Catholic teachings and legal requirements

With respect to securing accountability, I am quite interested in learning more about how to build staff members sense of internal accountability. This is a big one for me so I really want to push myself to learn more about it and what my mentors perspective is on it. Moreover, meeting the demands for external accountability is also a big one for me and seems challenging, but from an entirely different perspective. 

I feel like I have a great starting point with respect to my initial learning goals that connect directly with the Leadership Framework. I also have some questions I would like to pose to my mentors that are more of a personal nature. They involve such things as work-family balance, hard conversations, and the ability to be flexible and open to whatever comes their way as leaders in schools. 

I'm sure I could find formal expectations in the Leadership Framework to address the topics I just mentioned, but for now, I'm going to keep things as they are. I will take time to reflect on what I have written today and be open to what comes my way when I connect with my mentors.

Leadership Part III - Growing in Leadership

Nearing the end of Leadership Part II, many of the participants (at least the ones that I spoke to) were pleased with the program but were left wanting more. Many of us expressed an interest in some type of job shadowing component. In particular, many of the elementary educators felt this way because there aren't many opportunities for formal leadership in the elementary panel as compared to the secondary panel. We don't have program heads and things of that nature in elementary. For us, the jump is straight from the classroom to the main office as a Vice Principal - without any buffer leadership opportunities.

Another want/need of many of the participants revolved around conflict resolution and difficult conversations. Conflict is going to occur, it is unavoidable. It is important that we know how to deal with it in ways that are effective and as positive as possible. For these reasons, the part III program incorporates sessions that are designed to help participants learn how to navigate conflict in ways that will build people up instead of break them down.

There is also a third component of the program, it involves professional reading and a meeting with a member of the Senior Administration team. The program provides us with a detailed list of possible book choices and how they connect to the Ontario Catholic Leadership Framework. The requirement is that we choose a book to read/study and then meet with a member of Senior Administration to discuss the book and our thoughts/opinions/growth. Another great opportunity to develop, share our learning, and connect with a tried and tested leader in our system. My only issue with this component is that there are so many good books that I will most likely read more than one!

Aside from the mentorship component, in class sessions, and the professional reading/discussion with Senior Administration, I am really happy that +Lorrie Temple will be facilitating the part III program. She is most certainly a wonderful role model to help us along our learning journey.

I am looking forward to participating in the opportunity that Board is providing. For me, it is helping me become a brighter individual for the people who surround me.

Experience 3.0 - New School, New Grade, New Culture

The new school year is underway and for me the key work is "new"! I've transferred schools and teaching a grade I have never taught before. I'm also learning about the culture of my new workplace. Each school is unique - they all have their own charm and needs. My colleagues have been very helpful and friendly. I'm enjoying my students and they seem to be in good spirits.

I'm doing a lot of observation and I'm listening to what people have to say. I'm very aware of the fact that I have just arrived and that it is important that I find my place, how I fit in this new culture, and how I can use my knowledge/skills/gifts to support my class, colleagues, and the school community. As I reflect on my first month in my new environment, I realize that I have not been as passive as I thought I was being. Using the Catholic Leadership Framework to assist with my reflection and preparation for the upcoming months, I realize that I have been engaged in the following expectations/look fors in my day to day interactions at school:

• encouraging my colleagues to be innovative in helping students meet expectations (setting directions)

This past week I was talking to a few colleagues about what my students were doing using Google Drawing during a science activity. They viewed the work my students were doing as over the top but my response to them was that my students were doing common things in a new and exciting ways and that their students could do the same things. I encouraged them to try something similar and mentioned that I would be happy to assist them in trying something innovative to help their students meet a learning goal.

• making my expectations known through words and actions (setting directions)

In my day to day interactions with my students, parents, and colleagues I communicate my expectations in what I say and what I do. This is not to say that I am inflexible - I operate from a set of beliefs that I value and I allow those beliefs to guide my day to day interactions. I have standards, and they are subject to change based upon meaningful conversations and when I learn new things and unlearn old things. 

• acknowledge and celebrate the accomplishments of others (building relationships and developing people)

This has been a lot of fun over the past month. There have been many laughs and "small" victories where I have acknowledge the accomplishments of the people around me. It is in celebration that I have been able to connect with my colleagues and get to know them a bit better.

• demonstrating respect for the ideas of my colleagues, students, and parents by listening to their ideas and considering them as valuable/viable options (building relationships and developing people)

I met with several parents (some before school started) who wanted to meet me and talk about their child's strengths and needs. Meeting with them and listening to their experiences and ideas on how to help their child succeed has been quite valuable as it has allowed me to build trust and rapport with all involved. With respect to my colleagues, we have already met twice to help build our School Improvement Plan. Each of us comes to the table with a variety of ideas/experience and we all speak from those perspectives. Again, listening to them and taking their perspectives into consideration has been nothing but helpful.

• encouraging a willingness to compromise among collaborators (developing the organization to support desired practices)

Along the same lines as above, we quickly realize that not all ideas presented to help make our school a better place will fit into the vision and mission of the school. As a new staff member my perspective come from other schools I have worked at. My new colleagues were willing to compromise and I demonstrated the same in return. 

• creating a classroom environment where parents are welcomed, respected, and valued, as partners in their children's learning (developing the organization to support desired practices)

Meeting with parents before the start of the school year really demonstrated that they are welcome in my classroom community and that I want to hear what they have to say. I do believe that education is a partnership and that we all provide a piece to the puzzle that will lead to student success. Aside from the regular modes of communication with my parents, I use Twitter and Remind to post photos and information in "real time" so that they can feel like they are actually in the room with their child. Parents are really enjoying this and feel like they are being respected and welcomed because of all the sharing.

• ensuring that the Ontario Catholic Schools Graduate Expectations are incorporated throughout the curriculum (improving the instructional program)

This is something that I have been very focused on this school year. As we gather for whole group instruction I have been taking the time to explicitly talk about the OCGE's and which one is being addressed in what we are doing/working on. I feel that it is raising awareness with the students which is helping them reflect on the OCGE's as they live their lives.

 

• collaborating with my colleagues during meetings involving data interpretation (improving the instructional program

As I mentioned earlier, I have had several opportunities to collaborate with my colleagues during meetings to look at data, make interpretations, and plan accordingly. It is never easy to find time throughout the school day to meet and do this kind of work so when it happens it is a real treat because it is what helps make our school a better place for our students.

It has been quite a busy month and it doesn't look like it is going to ease up before our first natural break - Thanksgiving - the perfect time to reflect on what we do and why we do it.