{"id":92,"date":"2015-04-20T02:45:01","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T02:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/?p=92"},"modified":"2015-04-20T02:57:33","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T02:57:33","slug":"what-action-planning-and-the-pursuit-of-flourishing-have-taught-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/2015\/04\/20\/what-action-planning-and-the-pursuit-of-flourishing-have-taught-me\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cohort 21 Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"

First, an update.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since my last blog post<\/a> and the completion of Phase 2 of my Action Plan (to create \u201cA Toolkit for Flourishing<\/a>\u201c), I\u2019ve been working on Phase 3: Implementation.<\/p>\n

Initially, I was not exactly sure what Phase 3 would look like. I knew that it would involve sharing out the Toolkit, and I knew that I wanted to actually start practicing positive education \u2013 but I wasn\u2019t quite sure how I was going to do this. I worried about not having enough time to execute an idea, or not executing it well.<\/p>\n

In hindsight, these concerns led me to Key Learning #1:<\/p>\n

Take risks and start small!\u00a0<\/strong>Meaningful change need not necessarily be a major change<\/em>. In fact, according to this TedTalk<\/a>, small changes tend to be more sustainable.<\/p>\n

As late March turned to early April, I honed in on a simple idea that would put my Toolkit (or at least one<\/em>\u00a0tool from the Toolkit) into action: a Twitter wall that streams gratitude tweets with the hashtag, #RidleyFlourishes<\/em><\/strong>. I challenged my homeroom students to List Three Gratitudes<\/a> every day for at least one month, and encouraged\u00a0students to share some of these gratitudes via Twitter (using\u00a0a class Twitter account). I also threw this challenge out to the wider Ridley community, in hopes that other members of the school would participate. A live stream of these tweets has been displayed\u00a0(via Visible Tweets<\/a>) in our Lower School Library and in the Upper School Learning Centre. Students, teachers, and administrators alike have taken\u00a0on the challenge!<\/p>\n

\"picstitch<\/a><\/p>\n

In an effort to measure the impacts of this challenge,\u00a0I had my homeroom students complete a questionnaire \u2013 known as the \u201cFlourishing Scale<\/a>\u201d \u2013 before beginning the challenge. They will complete the same questionnaire at the end of the month, and I will compare the two sets of data.<\/p>\n

I am pretty pleased with how Phase 3 is going so far \u2013 but I cannot take credit for it! I would not have developed or executed this initiative without the help of some friends and fellow Cohort 21ers (especially, @dneville<\/a>, @gnichols<\/a> & @shelleythomas<\/a>!) \u2013 which brings me to Key Learning #2:<\/p>\n

Go public! <\/strong>Be brave enough to put your ideas out there \u2013 even if they\u2019re early ideas that aren\u2019t yet fully developed \u2013 via F2F conversations or social media. You never know what great feedback or new ideas you might get back.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

After setting up the gratitude challenge and the Tweet wall, I thought the bulk of my \u201cjob\u201d was done; I had overcome the challenge of implementing Phase 3. I quickly realized, however, that there was much larger challenge to tackle: if I want my students to flourish, I<\/em>\u00a0too need to pursue flourishing. \u201cAction speaks louder than words,\u201d as they say. Hence, Key Learning #3:<\/p>\n

Model flourishing<\/strong> (or whatever your goal may be)!<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve taken the gratitude challenge alongside my students, and I\u2019ve been sharing some of my gratitudes on Twitter as well. It\u2019s one thing to research and talk about flourishing, but it\u2019s quite another thing to actually live it. This perhaps, will be my greatest challenge (not to say that I am unhappy, but I could certainly work towards increasing my overall well-being).<\/p>\n

One thing that I am sure of \u2013 a sort of \u201cunofficial\u201d Key Learning #4 \u2013 is that doing this work, and being a part of Cohort 21, has absolutely helped me on my personal journey towards flourishing.<\/p>\n

So thank you, Cohort 21, for an incredible year. I am truly grateful to have been a part of this experience. I look forward to continuing the journey.<\/p>\n

Check out my \u201cCohort 21 Reflection: A Toolkit for Flourishing\u201d Prezi presentation here<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First, an update.\u00a0 Since my last blog post and the completion of Phase 2 of my Action Plan (to create \u201cA Toolkit for Flourishing\u201c), I\u2019ve been working on Phase 3: Implementation. Initially, I was not exactly sure what Phase 3 would look like. I knew that it would involve sharing out the Toolkit, and I … Continue reading “The Cohort 21 Journey”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":93,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[19,15,21,16,22,7],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-action-plan","category-classroom-reflections","tag-building-capacity","tag-flourish","tag-gratitude","tag-happiness","tag-reflection","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/allisonharding\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}