Tag Archives: leadership

Walking My Way In

I spent the last several days thinking and talking about leadership and the pathways that lead to and open into leadership opportunities—particularly in a writing project context. Settled in the rustic natural beauty of the hills outside Austin, I did a lot of walking, and talking, and thinking.

In the educational community, many teachers doubt their leadership—especially if it is situated outside of the classroom. Leadership feels like something bestowed, it comes with a recognizable title, and it means telling others what to do.

But in so many ways, my own experiences with leadership have involved making and doing. It has been about invitations that carry with them a sense of belief that I have something to offer—maybe something I haven’t yet recognized in myself. It has been about saying yes even when I wasn’t sure of what saying yes meant.

And like this weekend, sometimes I walk behind someone else, noticing the footsteps, watching where they sidestep the boggy places and climb over the branches.

Sometimes I break the trail, exploring through my feet on the ground, listening to the sounds around me, noting the running water and the squirrel that runs overhead. When I feel lost (and that definitely happens!), I stop to look and listen. What happened to my path? Can I find it again…or make my own in the moment? And there are times when I simply have to backtrack, retracing the steps I already took.

So I know how to support new leaders in the ways I have been supported to grow as a leader. But how do we recognize and make spaces for leaders with abilities and knowledge different from our own?

How do we make spaces so their leadership can take root and grow outside the groomed planter boxes that are easily recognizable?

All that walking and talking has me contemplating possibilities, and is lighting the fires of design thinking. I’m looking forward to gathering a team at our writing project site to considering alternatives that will include those who haven’t found our typical entry points, creating new access–hopefully for those who bring talents and perspectives currently missing from our conversations and our planning.

I’m walking my way in to new understandings…and I hope that will also open up new pathways for others to walk their way into leadership at our site, enriching and expanding our community of learners and leaders.

Structures

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I treated myself to a walk on the beach today after a writing project meeting at the university. So instead of walking on the beach near where I live, I walked on the beach down the hill from the university. It was foggy and cool, a perfect day for thinking and reflecting.

As I was walking I was thinking about the meeting…a follow up to the Invitational Summer Institute (a 4-week intensive leadership institute in the teaching of writing)…and the structures that we need as learners to move along the continuum from novice to expert (with the endpoint constantly moving) and from follower to leader.

The structure of the Summer Institute (SI) is designed to immerse teachers in writing, researching, reflecting on their practice, and critical conversations about teaching and learning. The structure is strong and well built, based on the 40-year-old model developed by National Writing Project founder, Jim Gray.

This pier is also a carefully designed, well built structure made to withstand the battering waves of the Pacific Ocean and the relentless wind and sun. I love the way when you look through the pier it narrows and provides a window through the corridor of surf out to sea just like the SI helps teachers look carefully at policy and practice and then focus on instruction that best supports the students in front of them.

And some of the structures we depend on are organic like these cliffs.

They are shaped by the natural environment. I watched our SI participants create their own structures as well. They gathered this morning, organically, catching up with each other as we, as facilitators, finalized our last minute plans.

And then there are structures that are light and flexible, like this feather on the beach.

It makes me think of our Twitter Fellow of the Week. This playful use of social media supports more weight than you might imagine. While we originally saw this program as a way to connect to one another within our project by giving each other a glimpse into a week in the life of an SDAWP educator, it has proven to do more. When teachers use Twitter as a professional learning network, their interactions begin to impact their practice. Suddenly they are reading more professional articles about education, “listening in” to debates about policy and practice, getting and sharing ideas from others (within our site and beyond our site), and making their own classroom practice more visible.

Today we asked our SI 2013 cohort to sign up as Twitter Fellows…and starting tomorrow we will begin to get a glimpse into their lives. (You can follow @SDAWP_Fellow on Twitter) Those who are more confident on Twitter signed up first…but others are willing to dip a toe into this unfamiliar world of tweets and hashtags and mentions. And they have the rest of the SDAWP community who are happy to help…and the others in their cohort will also be “listening” on Twitter, ready to respond and retweet and favorite…so they won’t be hollering into the dark.

My beach walk today was quiet and introspective as I thought about all the structures I noticed…and those we use to support learners. Structures can help us stretch and reach and connect as we learn and grow. What structures support you? What structures support your students?

I Am a Connected Educator! (writetheworld.me)
SDAWP Reunion (judymko.wordpress.com)

Eat…and Lead Locally

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Local Love. That was the phrase that caught my eye while enjoying some yummy gelato for my mom’s birthday on Sunday. EscoGelato makes a point of highlighting all the ways their products are local—using local bakeries for their breads, local farms for their avocados, eggs, strawberries…

Yesterday I ate locally again. At Urban Plate with my friend and San Diego Area Writing Project (SDAWP) colleague Abby, I also noticed signs in the restaurant pointing to the sources of the local produce and other food products. It feels good to eat locally—in both places the food was delicious and the feel in each place was friendly and welcoming…accessible.

As we ate, Abby and I caught up on the progress of our summer and moved to the topic of professional development for teachers. We talked about how teachers need to not just hear about some new approach or instructional technique, but to try it out and think about how and why it is useful for themselves as learners and for their students before they can truly implement effectively in their own classrooms. And that, as professional developers, our hearts drop when participants say, “Can’t you just come to my classroom and teach it for me?”

Abby and I talked about the power of connectedness and collaboration for professional growth. How opportunities to talk about our ideas caused those ideas to grow and develop and transform into something more than where they began. And how that collaboration makes us a bit braver and more willing to take risks with our teaching practice…and in the process we grow as educators. We also talked about how important it is for someone in your local place—your school site, your district, your writing project or other organization—to see you as a leader. We grow leadership when we nurture leaders.

At the SDAWP, we’re right in the middle of the Invitational Summer Institute…a place for nurturing local leaders. And I’m not so sure that all of the participants see themselves as leaders—yet. But we’re ready to help them and to ease them into some accessible spaces where their leadership can emerge and continue to grow whether that is in their own classrooms, at their school sites, or beyond. Maybe that, too, is local love.

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