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Habits of Mind: Persistence & Impulsivity


My blogging has taken a bit of a back seat of late due to a whirlwind of activity at work, preparations for my upcoming hip surgery on the 20th, the usual holiday hoo-hah surrounding Hanukkah and Christmas (we get down both ways in my house), and struggling with my literature review on distributed leadership for grad school.  In the interest of maintaining some semblance of normalcy among all the insanity, I did want to pop in for a quick reflective piece on how I’ve been doing with the first two of Costa & Kallick’s (2010) habits of mind: persisting and managing impulsivity.

Persisting: Stick to it!  Persevering in a task through to completion; remaining focused.

This really isn’t much of a challenge for me when the tasks come one at a time, but it gets a bit more difficult when they start flying at me from all directions.  My default mode is to start a task, notice that another one is undone and start working on that, notice a third that just needs one quick thing done to it, after which I see something else that needs… and so on, which ties in neatly with:

Impulsivity: Take your time!  Thinking before acting; remaining calm, thoughtful, and deliberative.

Impulsivity is really only ever an issue for me when it comes to task completion, in that my focus tends to flit to whatever issue comes up next, regardless of how complete (or incomplete) the previous one is.  As work has become predictably more hectic in the period between Thanksgiving and the New Year, I’ve been more conscientious about completing one task (or at least getting to a natural break) before starting the next.  Without taking this deliberate approach to my work, it would be very easy for jobs and responsibilities to get buried and lost under the taskalanche.  Happily, taking this deliberate approach has helped me to stay up to date on all my responsibilities, which was even more important to me than usual this year since my break started three days early due to my surgery.

I hope to get at least one more post up before 2012, but if I don’t, I wish you all a happy holiday season!

Reference

Costa, A.L. & Kallick, B.  (2010).   It takes some getting used to: rethinking curriculum for the 21st century.  In H. H. Jacobs (Ed.), Curriculum 21: essential education for a changing world (pp. 210-226).  Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

Posted 22 December 2011 † damian § Habits of Mind § Reflection ‡ Comments (2) °

Feelgood Folders


No matter how much we love what we do, we all have those terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days that get us feeling down on ourselves.  It’s in anticipation of those days that I started a “Feelgood Folder”, a manila folder where I store thank-you cards & letters, commendations, emails, and anything else I have received in appreciation for a job well done.

If memory serves, credit for this idea has to go to my cooperating teacher during my student teaching experience in the fall of 1998.  I started my folder toward the end of that semester, and have been contributing to it here and there for 13 years now.  In fact, given the broad scale shift to digital communication in that time, I even started a separate feelgood folder notebook in my Evernote.

It’s not something that has to be public like a blog or website (although there’s nothing wrong with a little shameless self-promotion from time to time), just someplace you can go to remind yourself of all the good you do for so many people every day.  People in professions such as education give so much of themselves to help and support others that they too often neglect themselves.  If you don’t have such a folder, consider starting one; if you’ve already got one, take some time to flip through it and enjoy some well-deserved recognition.  If nothing else, it’s good for the soul.

Posted 15 November 2011 † damian § Fun Stuff § Reflection ‡ Comments (0) °

The End of Isolation


In September, I was very proud to have my first contribution to a peer-reviewed journal published.  When a friend asked if I had publicized this on my blog, I paused, then realized that in the hubbub of the start of school, I had completely forgotten.

So anyway, here goes: in “The End of Isolation”, my co-authors (Eric Brunsell and Elizabeth Alderton, both of the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh) and I explore how K-12 classroom teachers use Twitter as a means of professional networking (the research behind the article was the basis of Eric’s and my conversation at Educon 2.3 this past January).  More from the abstract:

The researchers surveyed and analyzed the public Twitter feeds of classroom teachers to determine the specific purposes for which teachers use Twitter. Study participants also completed surveys dealing with social networking. The K-12 educators in this study engaged in true dialogue, where evidence of actual conversation occurred in Twitter over 61% of the time. Additionally, over 82% of the time, the educators in this study chose to follow other educators or content experts related to their field of teaching so they were able to create a personal learning network meaningful to their professional needs. Analysis of data shows that a majority of tweets were educationally focused and were primarily in the categories of practice/philosophy, questions, and sharing of resources. Additional studies looking at how other online learning communities may be used as professional development venues would be beneficial and add to the knowledge base of online learning, professional development, and learning networks.

The article appeared in this past September’s issue of MERLOT’s Journal of Online Learning and Teaching; the full text of the article is available here for your review.  Finally, a huge THANK YOU to the participants in our survey; we truly could not have done this without you.

Reference

Alderton, E., Brunsell, E., & Bariexca, D.  (2011).  The end of isolation.  MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching, 7(3), 354-365.

Posted 07 November 2011 † damian § Damian's Favorites § Professional Development § Research § Social Network § Twitter ‡ Comments (0) °

Taking Stock


It’s hard to believe that the school year is 20% over already.  The past few months have been a whirlwind for me, due primarily to me starting both a new job and a new graduate program at the same time.  I’ve debated the wisdom of that decision several times over the course of September, but after a rocky start, things have finally evened out.  I feel comfortably settled into both my new job and my new school, and I’m happy to report I’m enjoying both!

The first course in my doctoral program, Experiential Learning, focused primarily on helping students to codify their beliefs about leadership and establish learning goals for the coming year.  In one of my papers, I established the following goal:

Goal #2: Reflect on my learning in a transparent manner.   I have long felt that honest reflection is one of the most vital components of learning, and I required my students to do it frequently, both verbally and in writing.  As a blogger of over four years, I have found great value in writing about my professional practice and considering feedback from my audience [...] I hope to gain similar benefits from writing online about my experiences in the doctoral program as I have from writing online about teaching and school psychology.

So what are my reflections upon finishing my first course?  They’re much less to do with leadership and more to do with biting off more than I can chew.  I figured it would be difficult, but doable, but I seriously underestimated how much all this newness in my life would take out of me.  I don’t feel that either my studies or my work suffered as a result of my decision, but my sleep patterns, stress levels, and general well-being certainly did.  I had the opportunity to defer starting my studies for a year, and in retrospect that wouldn’t have been the worst idea, but what’s done is done.  Moving forward, I need to be much more sensible about balancing my responsibilities.  Perhaps that’s not such a bad lesson for a future leader to learn now rather than later.

Posted 01 November 2011 † damian § Doctoral Studies § Reflection ‡ Comments (3) °

Incidental Learning


I spent the better part of my day today observing lessons in a variety of fourth and sixth grade classrooms.  While I always enjoy getting into the classrooms (and participating, when I’m allowed!), it’s always a welcome bonus when I learn something new while doing it, either about one of my students, about the subject matter, or about teaching techniques or tools.

Today I learned about two teaching techniques that were new to me.  You may have been using these for years, and if so, I’d like to hear about your experiences with them.  If not, feel free to take and use these as you see fit.

WhisperPhone

In one class, I initially thought I misheard when students were instructed to take out their “whisperphones” and start reading independently after they finished a task.  I Googled “whisperphone” on my non-whispering phone right there and found that it is indeed an actual product line.  The version I saw was a little plastic “handset” into which students read quietly; my understanding is that the handset (or headset) acts as a voice-feedback device that allows speakers to hear phonemes more clearly.  I can’t say for sure, never having seen this before this morning, but take a look at the company’s research page and come to your own conclusions.

Foursquare Plus 3

In my English teacher days, I used to have students use graphic organizers or plan sheets to organize their thoughts.   Today I learned about a slightly different take on graphic organizers: Foursquare Plus 3.

I’ve written and deleted several attempts at an explanation, but wasn’t satisfied with any of them.  Check this slideshow for an explanation instead (it’s the only result for “foursquare” on Google that doesn’t return something related to the location check-in site).

Do you have any experience with Foursquare Plus 3 or the WhisperPhone, good, bad, or otherwise?  See anything new here you might be giving a try?  Leave a comment!

Posted 24 October 2011 † damian § Reflection § School Psychology § Slides ‡ Comments (8) °