How to find real life learning, with an authentic purpose, in a supportive, energetic environment, where collaboration and competition keep momentum, curiosity and drive going?
How to test what I can add to a team of people I don't know, in an unknown setting with an unknown challenge?
I have signed up for Tauranga StartUp Weekend•, a 54hr "learning curve" where up to 80 people from various professional backgrounds (tech, design, marketing, entrepreuneurs...) get together to form/join a team on an idea that is pitched on the first night, build a viable business, convince investors.
This is going to be a little... "uncomfortable"!
So what shall I take with me to "pad the ride?"
- a bit of tech end user experience,
- some facilitation skills
- a burgeoning understanding of the Design Thinking mindset (I'll have to tell you about that as I am putting this in real time practice for ThinkAgency!)
- my ability to generate ideas
- a capacity to look for, find and analyse relevant information
- my "to do" list obsession
- an aptitude to look for "work arounds"
- all that the world of teaching and learning has armed me with: patience, stayability, keeping things simple, working with others, curiosity, solving problems... will all this come handy?
- an open mind, ready to fill the kete!
- my brand new phone (again!) my laptop, my chargers.
And here is what I shall leave behind:
- preconceived ideas
- fear of the unknown
- feeling overwhelmed in front of awesomeness
- worry that I will be out of my depth.
So will I pitch on the night or what? One minute to convince an audience that your idea is worth spending time and energy on? It has got to be done.
• About Startup Weekend: Startup
Weekends are 54-hour events designed to provide superior experiential
education for technical and non-technical entrepreneurs. Beginning with
Friday night pitches and continuing through brainstorming, business
plan development, and basic prototype creation, Startup Weekends
culminate in Sunday night demos and presentations. Participants create
working startups during the event and are able to collaborate with
like-minded individuals outside of their daily networks. All teams hear
talks by industry leaders and receive valuable feedback from local
entrepreneurials. The weekend is centered around action, innovation, and
education. Whether you are looking for feedback on a idea, a
co-founder, specific skill sets, or a team to help you execute, Startup
Weekends are the perfect environment in which to test your idea and take
the first steps towards launching your own startup.
Showing posts with label affective factors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label affective factors. Show all posts
5 September 2013
29 June 2013
A good question is one that leads to more questions
Ruth, you write "What should I do, I wonder?" and I know you are not expecting to find a ready made answer.
And I know too you are not looking for one from me.
I realise, through experiencing it first hand, that there is a big disconnect between understanding and articulating the theory behind change and effectively effecting change:
I adhere fully to the statement that students learn best when they are in control of their learning. Yet not being in the classroom and not inquiring into my practice, do I know how to effectively "engineer a learning experience that maneuvers the student in the drivers' seat?", to effectively be a "leader of learning?". Does this make me a sideliner, a passenger, on for the intellectual ride, or a fraud even? I' d like to think not...
At Ignition-Emerging leaders, some participants describe environments which were not necessarily supportive. Autonomy and mastery, and how much they felt they had was discussed. I got the sense that their strong sense of purpose, the relationship they built with their students, the enhanced learning experience their students derived from their sense of direction drove their motivation regardless. I can portray you there.
Being autonomous though has actually resulted in heightening my sense of responsibility and accountability for whatever I contribute to. That is driving me also.
Along the way (the drive LOL!) I am learning heaps, and I have finally learnt enough about learning to learn that I can make sense of design thinking to try to create something tangible for the greater good, not mine necessarily. That is not going to be effective in schools directly. I have to look around this, with life long learning firmly in mind. My rather unique pathways are not employable (no one has come and poached me yet :-)), so I am currently working very hard at identifying why I am passionate about everyone realising their potential. That may give me a tangible solution for what I can offer concretely that will fill a gap, a solution that has not been thought of before!
What I am trying to say by writing this "me story" is that you have choices: you have a strong sense of self, you have creativity, knowledge, interests, resources, a support network. Swimming against the current is not sustainable, and you are not a fitness fanatic! What were the contexts in which you have been employed that allowed you to be in "your Ken Robinson element"? How long ago? Would that still apply now? How do you offer to effect change? How much do we have to take into account the people (this may interest you) ? How do you describe your attributes for being a "leader of learning?" What is your why?
Your questions led to plenty more questions back. It was not so hard to put some here: they are the very one I am considering at the moment also.
PS: A while ago I read that to attend an often over subscribed TEDx event, you need to apply stating what you hope to get out of it and how you are trying to change the world. Start applying now for your chance to see Sir Ken next time!
28 June 2013
A bit of affective soul-searching
Coucou Madame,
Once again I find myself in a very self-reflective frame of mind. Its seems to be a game of two steps forward (or probably one and a half) and one step back as I blunder my way through the year. It's interesting after years - decades - of feeling reasonably competent and valued professionally, to feel so demoralised by half a year back in the classroom.
It's not all bad - far from it. I feel I have established a good rapport and mutual trust with most of my students but it's the criticism and the way it reaches one's ears that tend to eat away at ones self-confidence. Last thing today, just as I was leaving, I learned from my HOD that she had just been summoned to a meeting where one of my students and her mother were putting a case to the Principal to be moved out of my class 'because she wasn't learning anything from Mrs Bourchier.' I am struggling to keep a sense of proportion, as this is not an isolated criticism. I must be failing to do quite a few things 'right'. Is it a communication deficit, I wonder? I'm not used to feeling so under surveillance. It would be so much more productive if students approached me directly with their grievances rather than my finding out from the Principal via my poor HOD. It makes me think of the French education system and the effect of negative feedback on student learning. It makes you feel off-side and 'anti' and, well, 'nulle', not to put too fine a point on it. And the effect of feeling 'nulle' is that your creativity dries up and you suffer more mental confusion. You become to some extent the person the critics are depicting. Such is the power of a negative (or positive) affective climate, not only in your workplace but in any walk of life. To perform well you have to feel that you have been invested with trust from your management and your colleagues as well as from your students, just as to operate successfully in any relationship there has to be a high degree of good-will and mutual respect.
As you're aware, the students at my school are not strong on autonomy and tend to place the responsibility for the success of their learning squarely on the shoulders of the teacher. It's a heavy yoke to bear, as increasingly the evidence of learning requires more of them than just producing the facts. They need to think, process and infer - skills that they are slow to develop and adopt. I feel I'm working at odds with my NZC-imbued ethos, encouraging as it does, collaboration, connectedness and self-management skills.
Would I be more effective in a different type of establishment, I ask myself? Maybe not. I recognise that the way I am is somewhat at odds with the classic profile of a teacher. I'm not particularly assertive and this creates problems with students who are used to responding to external discipline rather than internal. The trouble is I don't really believe any more that corralling students in a classroom is the most effective way to foster their learning. I have a high tolerance of what other teachers might regard as 'transgressions'. I don't like imposing my will on anyone. Ergo I have difficulty saying 'do this or else' because for me the penalty for not doing something is missing out on the learning. I have the greatest difficulty with students who feel they're doing things for me rather than for their own learning - those students who won't lift a finger until you impose a deadline, then squeal because you haven't given them enough warning. The stakes are high, in spite of the NZCs pronouncement that there shouldn't be undue emphasis placed on high-stakes assessment. The whole school seems to be geared to individual success or team success in the case of extra-curricular activities. In any case, it's success at the expense of someone else's failure. That's what I find so hard to accept being non-competitive and inclusive by nature.
In short, I'm not in my Ken Robinson element. I know that there are teaching/learning contexts where I have in the past felt totally in my element. What's changed? I know I have. The frustration lies in not being able to be fully myself, in feeling I am leading a fraudulent professional existence.
The majority of this term has been taken up with preparation for assessment, assessment, post assessment, catching up with people who were absent for the assessment and now writing reports based on performance in the said assessment. Coupled with encroachment on ones teaching time of extended assemblies, students out of class for a plethora of activities, illness etc - it's hard to see where there is space left for real reflection - worthwhile learning.
What should I do, I wonder? How long can I continue to swim against the current? It's interesting to realise the importance of the affective climate in teaching and learning. Can I eventually make a difference, if I'm prepared to hang on until I've 'established my credibility'? This year so far reminds me of another year that I spent in a single-sex school in the 90s and which I remember as my least happy professional year. When I analyse why, the reasons are very similar - lack of professional trust, feeling of being under surveillance, deep conservatism and suspicion of innovative practices.
There are some silver linings to these clouds of negativity. My department and HOD are wonderfully supportive and collegial. They and most of the students are what make it still worthwhile getting out of bed for.
Ps. I've tried to upload some of our puppet dialogues, which the students love doing, but so far the upload has failed. BTTDB !!
Once again I find myself in a very self-reflective frame of mind. Its seems to be a game of two steps forward (or probably one and a half) and one step back as I blunder my way through the year. It's interesting after years - decades - of feeling reasonably competent and valued professionally, to feel so demoralised by half a year back in the classroom.
It's not all bad - far from it. I feel I have established a good rapport and mutual trust with most of my students but it's the criticism and the way it reaches one's ears that tend to eat away at ones self-confidence. Last thing today, just as I was leaving, I learned from my HOD that she had just been summoned to a meeting where one of my students and her mother were putting a case to the Principal to be moved out of my class 'because she wasn't learning anything from Mrs Bourchier.' I am struggling to keep a sense of proportion, as this is not an isolated criticism. I must be failing to do quite a few things 'right'. Is it a communication deficit, I wonder? I'm not used to feeling so under surveillance. It would be so much more productive if students approached me directly with their grievances rather than my finding out from the Principal via my poor HOD. It makes me think of the French education system and the effect of negative feedback on student learning. It makes you feel off-side and 'anti' and, well, 'nulle', not to put too fine a point on it. And the effect of feeling 'nulle' is that your creativity dries up and you suffer more mental confusion. You become to some extent the person the critics are depicting. Such is the power of a negative (or positive) affective climate, not only in your workplace but in any walk of life. To perform well you have to feel that you have been invested with trust from your management and your colleagues as well as from your students, just as to operate successfully in any relationship there has to be a high degree of good-will and mutual respect.
As you're aware, the students at my school are not strong on autonomy and tend to place the responsibility for the success of their learning squarely on the shoulders of the teacher. It's a heavy yoke to bear, as increasingly the evidence of learning requires more of them than just producing the facts. They need to think, process and infer - skills that they are slow to develop and adopt. I feel I'm working at odds with my NZC-imbued ethos, encouraging as it does, collaboration, connectedness and self-management skills.
Would I be more effective in a different type of establishment, I ask myself? Maybe not. I recognise that the way I am is somewhat at odds with the classic profile of a teacher. I'm not particularly assertive and this creates problems with students who are used to responding to external discipline rather than internal. The trouble is I don't really believe any more that corralling students in a classroom is the most effective way to foster their learning. I have a high tolerance of what other teachers might regard as 'transgressions'. I don't like imposing my will on anyone. Ergo I have difficulty saying 'do this or else' because for me the penalty for not doing something is missing out on the learning. I have the greatest difficulty with students who feel they're doing things for me rather than for their own learning - those students who won't lift a finger until you impose a deadline, then squeal because you haven't given them enough warning. The stakes are high, in spite of the NZCs pronouncement that there shouldn't be undue emphasis placed on high-stakes assessment. The whole school seems to be geared to individual success or team success in the case of extra-curricular activities. In any case, it's success at the expense of someone else's failure. That's what I find so hard to accept being non-competitive and inclusive by nature.
In short, I'm not in my Ken Robinson element. I know that there are teaching/learning contexts where I have in the past felt totally in my element. What's changed? I know I have. The frustration lies in not being able to be fully myself, in feeling I am leading a fraudulent professional existence.
The majority of this term has been taken up with preparation for assessment, assessment, post assessment, catching up with people who were absent for the assessment and now writing reports based on performance in the said assessment. Coupled with encroachment on ones teaching time of extended assemblies, students out of class for a plethora of activities, illness etc - it's hard to see where there is space left for real reflection - worthwhile learning.
What should I do, I wonder? How long can I continue to swim against the current? It's interesting to realise the importance of the affective climate in teaching and learning. Can I eventually make a difference, if I'm prepared to hang on until I've 'established my credibility'? This year so far reminds me of another year that I spent in a single-sex school in the 90s and which I remember as my least happy professional year. When I analyse why, the reasons are very similar - lack of professional trust, feeling of being under surveillance, deep conservatism and suspicion of innovative practices.
There are some silver linings to these clouds of negativity. My department and HOD are wonderfully supportive and collegial. They and most of the students are what make it still worthwhile getting out of bed for.
Ps. I've tried to upload some of our puppet dialogues, which the students love doing, but so far the upload has failed. BTTDB !!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)