Finding Balance

Posted on May 29, 2013 by Amy's Reflections
Balance.  How do you find balance within your life?  
Lately I have been struggling with how to find balance when each task before me seems to be more important than the previous one. Simply put, I can narrow down the big areas of my life into these categories:
  • Work
  • Dissertation
  • Family and Friends
  • Healthy living
  • Sleep, rest, relaxation
  • Extra curricular activities
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Each one of these categories is important to me, and an important part of living a balanced, fulfilled life. However, when one task, such as the hours and hours of homework (reading, researching, writing) required for the two summer courses I am currently taking, makes it’s presence known in a stronger way than normal, something has to give. When two or more of these items (such as homework, friends visiting from out of town, the need to schedule physical therapy sessions, and the time to plan for summer professional development workshops) become critical at the same time, it gets harder to find a balance. Not only does some area need to suffer a little, but the stress of prioritizing weighs heavy, at least for me. Especially when I enjoy what I do and I want to create a balanced life within each day, week, month and my life.
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Here is what I am doing to help myself find and retain the balance that is essential to my physical and mental well being:
1. Time management: I am naturally a list-maker and a woman who lives by an organized calendar, but this has become even more important during this stressful time period.  If I know I have X number of hours of homework to get done within a week, I map out exactly how much I need to do each evening to be prepared. My calendar includes tasks from all of the key categories I need to balance.  If I don’t schedule time for my workouts, they won’t get done.  If I don’t schedule time to plan the professional development workshops, I won’t be prepared to facilitate the important learning journey our entire district is continuing on this summer.  I make time management a priority to create the balance I need.
2. Prioritize me:  This is not easy for most of us, but it is necessary.  I realize that there is value in saying no to optional tasks to avoid needless obligations.  More importantly, I have learned that if I don’t take care of myself, I suffer physically and emotionally.  I worked too hard to lose weight, get in shape, and transform my lifestyle into something more healthy than I ever thought possible, to ruin it all by stressful, unscheduled moments. Therefore, I never let myself forget that healthy living is an important part of my balancing act!
3. Reflect:  The busier I get, the more I want to skip this step, but I’m forcing myself to stop, reflect and jot (through journaling, blogging, or collaborative conversations with friends, colleagues, and classmates).  Reflection not only helps me process where I’ve been, but also helps me see more clearly where I need to go.  I learn by reading, writing, and talking about my learning.  Reflection is a crucial element in my learning journey and to skip it because I am busy would take away quality from the work that I am doing.
What do you do to maintain balance during stressful time periods?  How do you prioritize the important tasks, say not to that which can survive without you, and take care of yourself in the process?
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Professional Collaboration

Posted on May 4, 2013 by Amy's Reflections

I am one of the moderators of the west coast edition of #satchat (along with @burgess_shelley, @drjolly and @DCulberhouse), originally started by @ScottRRocco @bcurrie5 and @wkrakower. Every Saturday at 7:30 EST and PST educational leaders join us for discussions about learning, leading, and living in these educational times.
Today I am reflecting on the power of this form of professional collaboration. No matter what the topic is, at the end of the #satchat hour I am invigorated. I often have a stronger, clear focus on my own educational philosophy and vision. I always have more ideas than I ever thought possible. I usually have new colleagues with whom I want to connect, building my PLN and the external resources available to me in the future. I have many liked tweets to refer back to, for website, blog, and book references as well as memorable quotes or ideas.

It is amazing to me how much I can learn about myself during these chats. I engaged in discussions I have never considered before. It is powerful to see how others respond to our questions and to each person’s individual answers. You never know who you will make a personal connection with during a chat, or what comment will spark great debate, controversy, or complete agreement. I can almost provide a 100% guarantee, however, that you will leave each and every #satchat excited by the amazing educators on twitter, engaged in new learning, and interested to share ideas with others. Professional collaboration can take many forms these days. While a twitter chat is just one form, and may not be right for everyone, I hope that all of my professional colleagues create opportunities for authentic, meaningful collaboration to occur. What have you collaborated about lately?

connected educators pic

 

So Many Hashtags, So Little Time

 

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Questioning

Posted on May 1, 2013 by Amy's Reflections
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I recently spent a weekend with friends and family members, including a 2 1/2-year-old. I spent the first half of the weekend being amazed by all of the questions this little girl asked: Why are you moving your chair Mommy? Why is the pool cold? Can I have strawberries? How did it get like that? What is he talking about? Will you read this to me? Not only did she ask tons of questions, but she listened intently when her parents answered her. She was so inquisitive and curious and fun to watch! For those of you who have children, I’m sure this isn’t surprising to you. But for those of you who are educators, I ask, is this what you hear in classrooms?
I spend the second half of the weekend reflecting on why this young child’s curiosity was so surprising to me. I babysat children when I was younger. I tutored, student-taught, taught and was a principal, surrounded by students from age 4-18. I have years of experience working with students in and outside of school. What I realized, however, is that the more time I spend in classrooms now, the less I hear questions being asked by students. Throughout my classroom visits, I hear teachers asking questions. This then leads to individual students responding to those questions, or students talking to partners about their responses. Occasionally, this leads to students writing responses. But it is a rare occurrence when the students are asked to generate questions. And I don’t just mean questions when they are confused and need a specific support.
 I want to hear our students’ creativity come out in the form of questions. Children are naturally curious (as anyone who spends any time with toddlers can attest!). How is it that a typical day in school can stifle those questions? What can we do to encourage questions? How do we provide meaningful opportunities for our students to ask authentic questions and share their thinking throughout the learning process? How do we structure the school day so that students not only ask their own original questions, but spend time seeking out answers to their questions through research, collaboration, and discovery? What does that classroom sound like?
Other posts on Questioning:
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The Joy of Writing

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Amy's Reflections

As we prepare to transition to the ELA Common Core State Standards next year, writing has come up in discussion over and over again. The phrase that bothers me most in these discussions is, “We need a writing program”.  A writing program does not teach writing instruction, does not address specific students’ writing strengths or needs, and a writing program definitely does not teach the joy of writing.

I have always loved to write. I never knew how easily it came to me until I saw my colleagues struggle with their own writing during professional learning opportunities where we, the teachers, had to go through the entire writing process. It was through that experience that I realized I enjoy teaching writing as much as I enjoy writing. But that is not a common joy for many teachers nor for most students.

We need to infuse our curriculum, instruction, and professional learning with writing knowledge- as writing crosses content areas, grade levels, ages, genres, and standards. Our teachers need to experience the joy of writing so that they can share that with their students. I just pinned the following quote (I don’t know the origin of it, but I love the message) on Pinterest this week:

“You learn to write better by reading. You learn to read better by writing. Reading and writing work together to improve your ability to think!”

 

happy writer

 

Other posts on writing:

Formulas for Writing?

Writing as Stress Relief

The Writing Process for a Blog Writer

Why I Write

 

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Time for Reflection

Posted on February 23, 2013 by Amy's Reflections

2013-01-28 07.20.30Lately I have realized more and more how important it is to stop and take time to reflect.  This is a habit that helps both personally and professionally, but I find that in our profession we do not build in that time often enough. We are so busy running from meeting to meeting, visiting classrooms, coaching teachers, that we rarely take time for something that can truly help us become stronger, more capable leaders. Reflection.

I myself struggle to slow down. Being from New Jersey I have always been teased because of how fast I talk. I do not have a natural habit of slowing down and thinking about my work. I am working on developing this habit. Sometimes I find that actually writing my thoughts down (in a journal, in a blog post, in comments to others’ blogs, in tweets) helps me reflect and walk away with new thoughts and ideas. Other times talking to my colleagues helps me gain a new perspective. Most often, my commute to and from work is where I do my best thinking and reflecting. But none of it is a consistent habit yet.

I believe that if we do not give ourselves time for reflection, it will not get done. In order to build this habit, I’m going to try to give myself more structured time in my daily schedule.  I want to think about what is working, what is not working, what my future goals are, and what I’m doing to support the vision of our district as well as my own professional goals.  I can only become a better, more focused leader by taking the time for reflection.

How do you take time to reflect on your work?

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Coming from a place of strengths (and acknowledging differences)

Posted on January 12, 2013 by Amy's Reflections

Do you know your own personal and professional strengths? Do you begin your work with a focus on what you are good at, or where you need improvement? When you come into a meeting or a collaboration with colleagues, is there ever a recognition that everyone brings their own unique strengths to the group?

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I recently had the opportunity to re-take the Strength Finder assessment for a class. The first time I took this assessment was during my first months as a principal. I offered the book as an optional book club and about 12 staff members participated in the reading and discussion of our strengths. I still have the chart my secretary created that outlined each staff member’s strengths and where we had commonalities. Sadly, after the book club discussion, I never did much with the information.

Fast-forward five years and I am now in a doctoral program where we took the 2.0 assessment and analyzed our results (along with those of the Myers-Briggs Personality Inventory and a Leadership 360 degree survey) with our classmates. After my class discussion I offered two of my work colleagues the opportunity to participate in the assessment.

We had a great conversation about our strengths, what they say about us, and how we can begin to reflect on using our strengths more within our work. While this was nice, the most interesting part of our conversation was when it led to us reflecting on both teacher collaboration meetings and teachers’ differentiating for students in classrooms.

How often do we (in our classrooms or staff meetings or PLCs) take the time to recognize individuals’ strengths? So often we run meetings (or teach lessons) in the ways in which we are most comfortable. We use strategies that highlight our learning styles and preferences and assume that everyone thinks and learns the way we do. But the reality is, there are a variety of learning preferences, strengths, personality traits, etc., that make us all different. There may very well be people with whom you collaborate every day who are uncomfortable with the way in which you run a meeting (or teach a lesson). How often do we talk about this?

I think it is important that we are explicit with our purposes and our processes. The more explicit we are with the purpose of our actions, the more likely people are to understand.  This may also open the door to bigger conversations about different processes that we can try to incorporate different strengths/styles/etc. We need to be okay with that dissonance, and open to these dialogues if we have any hope to improve our professional collaborations and our instruction to support all students.

I encourage us all to come from a place of strengths while acknowledging the differences among us. What are your strengths?

Are we all the same?

Are we all the same?

 

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2013 Musings

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Amy's Reflections

Many bloggers have taken the time to reflect on their work of 2012 and set goals for themselves in the new year. I would love to be able to say that I will post more often this year, but that is not a realistic goal for me at this time. I would love to be able to say that I will post more responses to the interesting, thought-provoking blogs I do make time to read, but that is not something I am willing to commit to at this time either. With a full-time job, a full-time doctoral schedule (in which my writing will be gearing up in the coming months!) and with only 4 pounds left to reach my goal weight, I do not have a lot of free time and am unwilling to set goals that I know I will not work to achieve.2012-01-15 15.45.25

I do, however, want to acknowledge that blogging has been an interesting journey for me thus far. I do a lot of reflecting on my own, in my head, but blogging has forced me to put at least some of that 90-mile-an-hour thought process down into coherent thoughts to be shared with others. Even more important, I have taken the time to read more blogs, tweets, pins, and ideas from my PLN colleagues than I even knew existed a year ago. While I haven’t always shared my reflections on the topics, I have enjoyed reading the thoughts of others. The world of education has both expanded and shrunk this year for me. I have connected with educators near and far who are pushing their own professional learning and therefore mine, in ways I never dreamed possible. At the same time, I found many like-minded colleagues celebrating similar successes and struggles all across the world. Education is very similar for many people, which can be a good and a bad thing. Education is very slow to move forward with advances in many areas, technology being but one example.  However, in my personal job and in my connections with my PLN, I have reason to hope.

There are a lot of hard-working, dedicated, life-long learners out there who are working to make necessary changes to education. I have many colleagues who believe that all students can learn and have a right to a top-notch education. There are leaders serving in many different roles who take their work to serve teachers and students seriously. Knowing that, I am going to revise an idea I saw on Pinterest this week.  There was an idea floating around out there to start a happy jar- every day write down something good, positive, worth celebrating or remembering. At the end of 2013 you can open your jar and read and remember all of the happiness you experienced throughout the year.  This is a way to celebrate big and small moments and to see the positive in every day life.

I don’t plan to write something every day nor to put it in a jar. But I do plan to take time to see the positive in more situations. I plan to take time to reflect (via blog, twitter, Pinterest, or real life conversations!) about the good things I see happening in education. I think we all need to remember this. I don’t know of a single educator who gets up in the morning with the goal to hurt students or their colleagues. We are all in this together, and positively, together we can do more.

2012-02-22 16.57.24

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TEDxSan Diego Experience

Posted on December 3, 2012 by Amy's Reflections

I recently attended TEDxSanDiego and LOVED the experience! If you are not familiar with TED Talks, please do yourself a favor and visit their website (www.ted.com) or download the free app and watch some of the talks. TED Talks are all about “ideas worth spreading” and each speaker brings a unique voice to their message. The talks cover a wide range of topics and professions and showcase not only the talents and passions of the speakers, but also the great ideas surrounding each of us everyday.

The theme of San Diego’s TEDx was Cause and Affect. Affect, not effect. The spelling was intentional, as Jack Abbott explained during his introduction. “Let this experience be the cause that affects you to change the world.” I was hooked from those opening remarks!  The speakers were broken up into four sessions:

1. Cause/Belief

2. Cause/Action

3. Affect/ Awareness

4. Affect/ Possibility

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I have no intention of sharing everything I heard throughout the day. The day was broadcast live and is probably archived online by now. Instead, what I would like to do is share a few of the highlights for me. I am still digesting the whole day, but have had some reflections marinating since I left the conference. I hope my thoughts give you ideas to ponder yourself. Feel free to share!

Mathew Emerzian talked about his chronic anxiety and the advice from a therapist, who said, “It’s not about you. It’s about serving the world”. Imagine if we all realized this? What if we taught all children this concept? What kind of world could we create (or sustain) if everyone lived to serve others, to make the world better, to think less about themselves and more about others? At the same time, Mathew shared the importance of telling someone that they matter. I would love to end a meeting they way he ended his talk. He had a group (of unknowing volunteers!) stand up and say, “My name is ____ and I matter because___”. WOW. I think we all need reminders about why our work, our contributions, our strengths matter.

Dr. Edith Eger, an Holocaust survivor, shared amazing stories of personal strength and triumph. But these two lines resonated with me more than all others: “When you share your secret, you are no longer in the concentration camp in your mind,” and “You have a choice- pay attention to what you’ve lost or what you have”. Her words were incredible. The image conjured up by the phrase “concentration camp in your mind” is scary and powerful. And for someone who has experienced what she has, to be able to recognize what is most important- that which you have, and not what you have lost- is powerful.

Scot Chisholm said something that reminded me of the value of collaboration: “What do we want to accomplish together?”. Seven little words with a big impact.  We are so much stronger together than we are alone. This was the same message that Ken Blanchard shared in his phenomenal talk at the end of the day. “With the speed of change today, we can’t afford to learn alone.” Ken shared two elements of collaboration:

– essence: the heart-to-heart, value-to-value of the work

– form: the structures of the work (where and when will we work, whose name will appear first, etc.)

If you don’t start with the essence, your collaboration will not be successful. So often in education, we jump right into form, forgetting about the essence. How powerful would our collaboration (teamwork, PLC’s, etc.) be if we spent time truly discussing the essence of our work first?

While the music by Unknown Lyric was touching and energizing and passionate and creative, the words the guitarist spoke were even more amazing. “I want to inspire others to do and be greater than me.” Along the same lines, Ken Blanchard ended with this question, “What is your strategy to make a difference in the world?” It is my hope that as an educator, I inspire others to do great things. It is my belief that education is a great tool. The more we teach our children to think, wonder, question, reflect, and do good for others, the better our world will be.  How will you inspire others? What will you do to show someone that they matter? How will you make a difference starting today?2012-12-01 15.03.32

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Questions without easy answers

Posted on November 4, 2012 by Amy's Reflections

“Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.”  ~ W. Edward Deming

Is your system getting the results you want? Are all of your students achieving at high levels? Are all of your teachers using the best instructional strategies to engage all students in authentic learning opportunities at high levels? Do all of your leaders serve as collaborative, instructional leaders with a clear vision of the future for their school and your district?

Most of us cannot answer yes to all of the above questions. So what now? What will you do to get different results? How will you redesign your system so that the results you see are better aligned to your vision? What needs to change in order to create stronger leaders, teachers, students, thinkers, schools, and systems?

What questions do you need to ask in order to begin the process? Where will you begin?  What next?

 

 

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Reflective questions

Posted on October 27, 2012 by Amy's Reflections

I have recently spoken with a few colleagues about the importance of asking reflective questions. I used to think that part of my role as a coach and an administrator was to make sure to share as much information with teachers as possible, especially if it was information I thought was important. Over time, however, I have come to see the value in asking a reflective question to a leader or a group of leaders to spark a conversation amongst the group.

Rather than sit and deliver information, I think we all need to rethink our role as leaders in the learning process. No one can possibly have all the knowledge, and we know that two heads are better than one, and three are better than two. How can we help those we lead come to new understandings without giving them our opinions or thoughts? By asking reflective questions, providing time for collaborative discussions, and facilitating those discussions when necessary.

What questions are you asking to facilitate new learning?

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