Urgent vs Important – Reflections on the return to school

Question 1: During the first face to face we used the language of Urgent vs Important to help frame our thinking around our use of TIME. Reflect on why you joined Cohort 21 and your professional goals for this year. Now that the year has begun and you have met your students what IMPORTANT  goal might you like to address and leverage this community to get support with.

I have joined Cohort 21 to continue my learning journey with the CIS community. I recently finished Part 2 of my PQP with the independent school focus, and I found the relationships and collegial conversations and guidance to be extremely valuable to my personal growth and to help make strides towards school wide improvements. I think an IMPORTANT goal I’d like to address for my students this year is how to increase the level of empathy and inclusion across the student body. Our students are growing up with access to so much negativity and hatred and I want to work towards increasing their own self confidence and their level of acceptance for others and valuing diversity.

Question 2: Which of the Season 11 Strands resonates with you and why? Share what you feel is both urgent and important about it for you and your school at the moment and some of the questions you have around moving forward.

It’s hard to pick between the but assessing our JK-6 learners and furthering our DEIJ work are two urgent and important goals for me and my school. My main question regarding moving forward is how to prioritize goals when there are so many to work towards. And, following the theme of urgent vs. important, how do you keep yourself in that target zone, without getting bogged down with the urgent, but unimportant parts of the job.