When I think about time spent at school, I think about it in three categories. First of all, there is the time that we devote to our relationships with students and teachers. It is the “How was your weekend?” and “How are things going for you?” questions that allow us to get to know our students and colleagues and show support. Secondly, there is the time that we devote to our classes. The planning, delivery and marking associated with each of our courses is important as we nurture our students as learners. The delivery of our courses is always more successful if we have taken care of the personal connections first. Lastly, but definitely not least, we need to consider the time devoted to co-curricular programs. These co-curricular programs are important for helping students connect with each other, learn different skills and create a feeling of community.
Time is crucial to being a good listener. It is impossible to develop relationships with students and colleagues when you don’t have the time to be an active listener during conversations. There are many distractions that impose limits on the length of these conversations such as emails, meetings, schedule, not to mention family concerns, and it is important to put these distractions in appropriate categories. As I have aged as a teacher, my priorities about relationships has changed. I have become less attached to following a strict schedule and more inclined to stop and listen. I need to continue to remind myself that stopping and listening is often important and sometimes urgent.
When delivering my science classes, I feel that the planning and organization is important. Since I am a fairly organized person, it rarely becomes urgent, for which I am grateful. Planning ahead means that I can devote more brain power to developing rich lessons as opposed to throwing something together last minute due to a sense of urgency. Marking can definitely fit into both categories. When students need work returned in order for them to prepare for a test, then marking is urgent. Otherwise, it gets the important label. Co-curricular programs are crucial to the community feel at an independent school. Being proactive about running them allows this part of my job to fit into the important but not urgent category.
My overall goal as an educator this year is to focus on the importance of relationships. At a time when mental health is precarious, these face to face interactions are key to a successful year and happy kids.
A more specific goal involves my role as student leadership coordinator in the Junior School. Over the past two years, the pandemic has interrupted many programs and opportunities for student leadership were limited. As we look forward to a more normal year, it is really important that I take pause to assess the current model that we have and develop the student leadership program further. Our program has many opportunities for grade 8’s to lead through our House Captain and Steward programs. The students in grades 4 through 7, however, need more chances to step up and shine and to be more connected to our Junior School community.
I have chosen the Pedagogy and Wellbeing Strand (7-12) and feel that the wellbeing aspect of this strand is urgent as we deal with the fallout of the pandemic. With the goal to create more leadership opportunities for students in grades 4 through 7, I’d like to develop a service program for our junior school. In order to support mental health, it is important to focus on Social, Emotional Learning and I believe that service projects are a great vehicle for this. The hope is that each homeform will choose a project for which there is a collective interest. Students will take on leadership roles in order to accomplish tasks decided on by the class. This work will provide new challenges for students, the opportunity to develop relationships and ultimately make a difference in the lives of other people. There are so many people who have been hit hard by this pandemic; hopefully these projects will help our students develop empathy and perhaps address some of these post-pandemic needs.
QUESTIONS:
- What frameworks are out there to support the creation of these service projects?
- How can I support teachers to guide students as they navigate choosing projects, learning new skills, showing leadership with their peers and engaging with a community outside of the Junior School.
- How can we
So glad you joined Cohort 21! Looking forward to your posts.
@agreig Amy, I appreciated your thoughts on the importance of relationships, particularly as we move forward into this school year. Often, relationships with colleagues and students can ‘fill our buckets’ and can thus positively impact our mental health. This means that relationships meet the criteria of both important and urgent. I’ll be interested to know what steps you will take in aiming to build and foster these relationships throughout the year!
Thanks for your comments, Brandon. I have just made some changes to my blog post as I have chosen a new goal for this year that focuses on my role as student leadership coordinator in the Junior School.
“I need to continue to remind myself that stopping and listening is often important and sometimes urgent.” I love this, Amy. I think there is such a beautiful relationship between our mental health and the service we can give to others. I am sure your students will feel that, too. I look forward to hearing more about what path you take.
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and goals @agreig! Yes, @jbairos I found that exact sentence resonated with me. There is an importance and urgency right now to focus on the wellbeing of our students. Being intentional about providing moments of supportive listening will no doubt positively impact the wellbeing of our students and continue to ease their transition back to in-person learning.
@agreig Amy- what a powerful first post! The way you have structured your time ins schools into the three main buckets is so helpful. Being able to understand where your time is going and where it needs to be directed to is a key strategy for not just your own mental well-being but for those around you as well. It struck me how some of your work can transition between urgent to important and visa versa- depending on what we have in front of us. This is a great example of how important flexibility is as we navigate this year. Having some guideposts are important, as you have so perfectly discussed, to help us stay organized and hopefully keep the stress levels down. But if we use these guideposts as hard rules that cannot be changed as our work does, then it defeats the purpose. Thank you for such an insightful post.
Thanks for this post @agreig and I echo @bblack and @jbairos comments above. I would also extend this comment: “My overall goal as an educator this year is to focus on the importance of relationships” and layer on top of this the matrix – so my question to you would be how do you do the important work of building relationships? What are elements of strong relationships that support learning?
Also, I urge you to consider this Seth Godin blog about urgency and importance: https://seths.blog/2016/01/deconstructing-urgent-vs-important/ where he highlights: “If you take care of important things, the urgent things don’t show up as often. The opposite is never true.”
Looking forward to learning with you!
Garth.
You bring up some great points about building relationships, @agreig! There is a strong connection between building relationships and providing leadership opportunities for our students. Through these opportunities, our students build a strong relationship with the school community, feeling a sense of belonging and responsibility that can be very deep and last a lifetime.
I like your question about frameworks that exist which support these opportunities. My guess is that the best framework is one that you create inhouse, and it’s probably mostly there already. Maybe you can use a pre-existing framework (i.e. school mission or core values) and then plug in your leadership opportunities. Starting with what you’re already doing, you’ll be able to see any gaps or overlaps by grade level or focus area.
Looking forward to working with you this year, Amy!
Danny 🙂