Leadership Style

We have been focusing on leaders and leadership in our masters program.  One leadership activity that I have enjoyed is a book study.  I choose the book, "Nice Bike," by Mark Scharenbroich.  It is about how to make meaningful connections as a leader.  The book is made up of the author's different experiences with people who are leaders and are making a difference in their own way.  I really like having the opportunity to discuss the book with others and share our own experiences and opinions about the book.  Many of the stories are just quick moments in time where a person is kind and does something to help someone and make them have a better day.  This type of leadership really resonates with me.  My leadership style is not one where I am the one who has the big game day motivational speech that pumps everyone up.  We do need those types of leaders, but we also need the people that do the small things that improve our surroundings.  I like to sit back take in a situation and then help to summarize and support people to solve a problem together.  As a teacher and an educator, I want to be approachable and have people feel they can always come to me for help.  When I walk through the high school halls during passing time, I make eye contact with as many students as possible and smile at them to just do something small to improve a child's day.

Another leadership activity that we did was identify our leadership style.  My style is adaptive assertive.  Some of the things that describe this type of leader are dependable, hard working, and highly organized.  The opposite side of these types of leaders is that they can be compulsive and unimaginative.  For the most part, I think this leadership style matches me.  I don't like to be the leader in front of everyone, I like to be in the background helping everything work smoothly.  I think others see me exhibiting this style of leadership and are able to come to me when they need help or want to know how I have taught a lesson or implemented something in my classroom.  The article describing adaptive assertive leaders give some interesting ideas for this type of leader to consider.  One thing that it says these type of leaders can do is to tolerate chaos and go with the flow.  As I teach longer, I am getting better at allowing controlled chaos happen.  Knowing my leadership style can be helpful as a leader in my classroom and the school because I know my strengths and can apply them in areas that are needed.  Taking the leadership survey was interesting and helpful to see how there are different types of leaders and for communities to work well there needs to be all kinds of people that contribute.

Engagement and AGAPE

       
This semester I am going to improve the engagement in my classroom by involving the outside community in my math and engineering classes.  Students see us each day and we start to become "old news" and separate from what they experience in the outside world and what they see as their future.  In my engineering classes, I would like to bring in electrical engineers for Digital Electronics and pilots or engineers for Aerospace Engineering.  We take two different field trips to the community airport in Aerospace class and it is very beneficial, but so far, I have not done any field trips in Digital Electronics.  Electrical Engineering is a bit of a mystery to many of the students and so if I can give them the experience of what happens in the outside world, they can get a better idea of what it is about and if they would like to pursue that path in college.  In my math classes, it is harder to think about how to involve the outside community.  If I can just start small by using Skype to talk with someone who uses math in their lives, maybe that can grow into something bigger.  I have found that it is much easier to find videos and clips about Aerospace Engineering topics than Digital Electronics or Geometry or Algebra.

Engagement is the final part of the AGAPE framework that we have followed throughout our masters program.  AGAPE has helped me change my frame of mind as I view my classroom.  There are so many different aspects that go into teaching and it is hard to focus on just one thing to improve or change.  By looking at the classroom through each of the five different views in the framework, it has helped me create short-term goals for my classroom.  Instead of trying to make many changes at once, I have chosen just one category to work on and then after that change becomes a habit and part of my everyday teaching, then I move on to another category and make a new improvement.  I think this positively impacts my students because education is always changing and they can experience those changes in a more controlled environment.