#IMMOOC 250 Word Challege: Strengths Based Systems

By Anonymous -
Some people call me a leader. Some people call me a rogue teacher. Which is it? Who decides?

I think I am a leader, but I do not want to be THE leader. I don't want to be in charge, but I want to share and push people's thinking and teaching and learning. It is my strength. Risk taking. Jumping in with both feet without a lot of perseverating on details, and then sharing my experience, my struggles, my successes, listening to feedback, and turning it around the next day or week or year.
In my strength, I feel like I could be so helpful to our organization at large. I'm just waiting to be tapped. I'm doing what I can to put myself out there, but I'm also waiting on someone to figure out what to do with me, in a sense.
Are our kids doing this? Are they sitting in class waiting for us to tap into their strength and show us their potential of what they can contribute to our classrooms? Are there other staff members waiting for someone on top to pick us out and give us a purpose?

Instead of wondering if someone is smart, wonder in what way they are smart. 
-Liz Wiseman

George Couros (@gcouros) author of Innovator's Mindset  mentions the book Multipliers, and this idea sticks with me to focus on strengths. How much trust could we build with the positive presupposition that everyone is smart in a way, and we just need to expose it? I'm a risk taker. And I am a leader. I decided.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Laying a Foundation with Kagan Heterogeneous Seating Groups

By Anonymous -
Image
I'm all for small group instruction. Narrowing down that student-teacher ratio from 22 or 26:1 to 4 or 5:1 is ideal for my understanding where my kids are and for directed instruction that the students stay engaged in. A few questions arise when you dip your toe into a workshop model of instruction . Here are a few I had: 1. How do I group my kids? See Below. 2. What do the other kids do while I pull a small group? It depends. Coming soon. 3. How do I manage behavior in a station/center/rotation atmosphere? See #2. 4. What do I do once my kids are in small group? See #2. I can answer Question #1 today. Heterogeneous grouping a la Kagan. I recently attended a Kagan training that our school hosted. You can buy the book online, as I did prior to attending the training, but the training itself is very helpful in understanding the idiosyncrasies of using the cooperative learning strategies. This is NOT a curriculum. Its a great way to access curriculum in a team building, com
Read more

Be Flexible...Beyond the Workshop Model

By Anonymous -
Image
I don't know if I have mentioned the fact that I work with an amazing team of educators. I fancy myself an innovator, but these women push me daily to think deeper, go bigger, and break out of the box. I wouldn't be the educator I am today without them. So many times we sat and discussed how we wish we had more time for this or that (Response To Intervention, Spiral Review, Reflection, etc.) You name it, we wanted to be doing it. Always racing the clock. In most teacher training I have been in, that is the piece that always comes up in the challenges and roadblocks talk. How do I get time on my side? My brilliant fellow teacher, whom I am grateful to call my close friend, suggested we throw the daily schedule out the window...wait, what?! I've been participating in what we called "Flexible Scheduling" for about 3 weeks now. Just as the transition from whole group to a workshop model changed my practice, this has turned my classroom on its head. In the b
Read more

#IMMOOC Dive Under the Iceberg

By Anonymous -
Image
Sylvia Duckworth's visual representation of success is so revealing. It struck a nerve. I have to be visible not only in my success, but in the process along the way. Process over product, or at least with it. But its a two-way system. I need to share my whole iceberg and look at other's when learning from them. Often we look at people doing amazing things and think, "Wow! They make it look so easy !" I don't know about you, but EASY is a 4 letter word in my classroom. I discourage students to use it because it is undermining for some and unrepresentative for others. So why do I use it? Nothing starts easy for anyone.  The challenge is to follow up those thoughts with "How did she/he get there? What did it look like along the way?" We need to ask those questions when we are learning, and give those answers when we are sharing. Its a true representation that will add fuel to the Crowd Accelerated Innovation. When we can learn from each other&
Read more