A Course on Leadership
Last week I finished my first Framingham masters course of
the new school year. 6 classes down
total, 3 to go until I have my masters degree.
This most recent class focused on Collaborative Leadership, and was
taught by a spunky, spiritual, loving professor who lives in Antigua and is,
simply put, a force of nature. Her class
was anything but conventional. We began
and ended each meeting with a bow, breathing in the air and energy from the
earth or the sky, bowing to each other and letting that energy flow to the
center of the circle, then breathing in again “just taking what we needed for
the night” as we stood up. We also
meditated several times throughout the course, and each evening included time
for both reflection and for play.
At first I really wasn’t sure what to make of the
course. It certainly was not stressful,
but the format being so different from other classes, I worried that I wouldn’t
learn “enough” in it. As the class
progressed, though, I came to realize I was
learning, just not in the conventional sense.
I didn’t leave the course ready for a test, with my head full of
memorized facts and data about the best forms of leadership…but I could
certainly write an essay about what it means to collaborate and what the most
effective forms of leadership look like.
During the course, we worked on a project utilizing
Appreciative Inquiry to interview people and then develop a “dream plan” to
revolutionize leadership, supervision, or professional development at our
school. Working in my group of 6
teachers was, in my opinion, hands-down the best group work experience I have
ever had, and a perfect example of collaboration. The six of us had very different views about
most everything, but shockingly, though there may have been moments of quiet
frustration during our discussions, we always talked it out and came around to
a decision that everyone was comfortable with.
It was a slow, thorough process.
Simply developing our four interview questions took several hours of
talking to come to agreement. But we did it. No one backed down or let the others take
over rather than disagree. That would
have been the easy way to solve our problems, just letting one person direct
the project and lead it in the direction he or she saw fit, but we didn’t do
that. And as a result, in my opinion at
least, we all came away with a clear vision of what it means to truly
collaborate.
Many education professors will tell you that the best way to
learn is by doing, and that we should teach our students using a Constructivist
approach (students construct their own learning). It’s sound theory, and lots of professors
tell you to do it in your classroom.
Very, very few professors
actually take the time and effort to practice what they preach. In fact, I think this course may have been
the only course in my life that I
think was truly Constructivist. My whole
mindset changed throughout the course, to the point where, when on the 2nd
to last day of class our professor finally got around to addressing Chapter 1
of our textbook by summarizing the key points for us, I found my inner self
rebelling, thinking, “What are you doing?!
You don’t tell us the ‘right’ answers about leadership or what
Appreciative Inquiry is…we figure it out on our own! Stop giving us the quick version!”
So I guess it’s pretty obvious that, whether I realized it
or not, I was learning quite a bit, not only about leadership, but about
teaching and how to create that environment that I covet in my classroom.
Comments
Post a Comment