An End

Today my Year 12 English students did their exam. Boy am I glad! For the last week and a half my studious Year 12s (and I don't include the whole class in that definition) have been making appointments, writing essays, asking questions and getting prepared the best they can for their exam. Whilst any teacher is more than happy to spend time with those who are putting in the effort and who want extra help, this is a taxing time. I have not had a free period in over a week, and due to the fact that half of my job is administration, things have been piling up. This afternoon was the first joyous free afternoon I have had in what feels like an eternity and my jelly-like brain has switched off well and truly. I am also excited that there is a four day weekend coming up because if I am a good little teacher and do all of my correction (3class sets worth of essays) then I will come back to school next week refreshed, with no work hanging over me and with a three day week ahead. Just the thought of it soothes my aching bones. If I am a bad little teacher however (which is entirely possible given my ability to be extremely unmotivated at times when it comes to correction) then that will be what consumes my entire week next week, a fate I don't really want to condemn myself too.
This is the part of the year that is exciting for me. The time when I get to look forward, identify my goals and targets for next year and start planning and working to bring them to fruition. This is the time of the year when I start to feel like I am really getting things done. The challenge though is to keep the momentum going and to get my teams working towards next year too. I have tried to start early, to set up teams of people to work on particular tasks and hopefully if I can keep them motivated and united we might get a result that doesn't involve me doing all the work. I'm proud of my BYTES team actually because I put out an urgent email this week for them to come up with report comments for their BYTES modules and within a day they had all responded. Due to the fact that I was dealing with Year 12s this whole week, the fact that I didn't have to chase anyone and that the comments were all of a decent quality was fantastic.
Anyway- I'm packing up so that I can leave ASAP after the bell goes. Tonight I am going to have a nice long bath with a nice long book!

Reflection on the Women in Leadership course

Many times I have been meaning to sit down and actually reflect on this course as a whole and what it has given me, but I haven't made the time, until now. This year I made a decision to PD myself crazy. I wanted to improve my skills and capabilities in leadership in particular because this is an area that I am increasingly moving into, and I think that I still have a lot to learn about people management and creating a team environment. So I found this three day, women in Leadership course and got involved. The beauty of this course was that we did two days, then were sent off with homework and reflection time, as well as two-like-minded mentors/peers to keep us on track. Here is what I gained:

• Two new friendships and many more new contacts
• A knowledge of how to deal with the teams you work with and how to manage difficult situations
• Practical activities and procedures for implementing change/promoting teamwork and creating a group vision
• A better understanding of what I value in the leaders around me and the type of leader I want to be
• A Vision of Leadership

Here is how I have implemented the knowledge so far:

• Used a Y chart and some negotiating skills with my Year 11 class to get them all on the same page and better control their behaviour.
• Began working with the BYTES team using the same methods to get them on the same page before we move forward with planning for next year.
• Helped the school rewrite its vision and values statement and come up with core values
• Reached out to form better relationships with managment and peers in the workplace.
• Taken time to really listen to everyone that comes to my door.
• Been proactive in seeking out advice about my position for next year.
• Rethought my priorities and motivations.

Here is what I am hoping to achieve by the end of the year:

• A cohesive BYTES team with a vision for the future and a strategy to get there
• A survivor team (the Year 8 program)
• New curriculum ideas and initiatives for BYTES and Survivor
• A better leadership structure within the programs under my charge
• A large role in the Year 7 redevelopment
• A role in the leadership of change in our school

I think that the leadership course really gave me the foundations to start moving forward with my positions at school. I think it is one of the most valuable forms of professional development that I have done so far in my career but I think there is still so much work to be done.

Holiday Revitalisation

I am horribly slack with this blog. I realised it has been way too long since I have written. Sometimes I think that I have to know what I am going to write about before I start and that there has to be a purpose. If I am going to get better at blogging more regularly, then this thought process will have to stop. I have had an eventful, yet restful holiday so far. I spent the first weekend in Brisbane, bridesmaid dress shopping for my best friend's wedding and we managed to get shoes too which is a bonus. Since then I have read 4 novels, spent two days doing activities (jewellery making and cooking) with my mum's day care children, have been for a walk almost every second day (I need to get the wedding exercise program back in gear - I'm hoping the extra daylight from daylight savings will help me there) I have finished Year 12 SAC correction and have spent two afternoons at school working on a curriculum team structure with my AP. I have done two budget request forms for two of my programs for next year which is something I haven't had to do before so I am glad that is out of the way. I have caught up with some friends, visited my cousin and her new baby and just these last two days I feel like I am starting to relax.
Term 4 should be interesting. Things will really begin to be fleshed out with our new Year 7 structure and hopefully the positions and structure for next year too. There are so many things at the school at the moment that are uncertain so it will be interesting to see how things fall into place. I am excited about the potential new challenges for me next year. I'm not sure how certain things will pan out but I do know for sure that in May I am getting married and then going to Europe for 5-6 weeks which will be amazing. This may impact on my teaching responsibilities though, because 6 weeks is a long time to be missing Year 12s. I think if I am involved in running curriculum initiatives in the junior school then it makes sense that I take Year 7 again and perhaps Year 9 (still not so keen on Year 8s!). I have also been teaching Year 11s for 5 years so I am happy if I have a bit of a change if necessary. It is always at this time of the year that I start looking to next year and thinking about what is necessary to forward plan and what the best way is to start getting things done.
Before the end of the holidays I would love to get my Year 11 correction done but I also have some homework to do from the BYTES program so that I am ready for next staff meeting.
My new term resolution is to write more - lets see how that goes!

I've tried a couple of times to sit down and write lately but I haven't been able to work out exactly what it is that I wanted to say. I have been feeling a bit adrift lately - not sure of what my role will be next year, not sure about my place in the school and how what I am doing is contributing to the greater picture. I love my job and I love all the little aspects that are involved in it (except, perhaps, the dreaded marking)! but lately I have been recognising the importance of being reminded that you are doing a good job. That acknowledgment and validation that we all crave from our leaders is a huge motivator - helping to keep us on track and to keep our spirits up when the chips seem to be down.

There is so much happening at the school next year and I am keen to get involved but wasn't sure about what the opportunities were going to be. Rather than sit around dwelling in the uncertainty (which is something I do too often -see My Fatal Flaw) I have decided to be proactive and to find out what is going on and what my role will be when it all starts happening.

Today I had a discussion with my boss and really told her how I was feeling and she gave me some really positive feedback and concrete details about next year. I feel now like I have some certainty in my role and like I am ready to face the next challenge. For me it is really important to feel like I am moving forward - I don't ever want to sit back and simply repeat things that I have already done so it was important to me to know that there would be more challenges in store.

I feel like I have been revitalised. There are still many details to work out and a long way to go before my role is really fleshed out the way that we both hope it will be but for the moment it is enough.

My Fatal Flaw

There are things about myself that I have always known: 1) that I do not deal well with uncertainty and 2) that I often internalise my stress and instead of going to the source and dealing with it my conflict hating self just stresses quietly without sorting out what it is that is going on. These two things are going to be the things that I will have to watch over my journey. I need to be more patient - not constantly thinking, planning and worrying about the future. Central to this is the fact that I also need to trust more. Trust that I will be looked after if I continue to work hard and do the best that I can. Sometimes I lose sight of this and I feel like I lost sight of this over recent weeks and I am just beginning to pull myself back out of the fuzz. As part of the leadership course I am completing, one of my colleagues suggested that a female mentor would be really positive for my development and it seemed to me to be exactly what I needed. I asked our principal, who was so influential to me as an AP when I first started teaching, if she would be interested in mentoring me. We had our first meeting on Friday and discussed her experience of leadership and how she came to be in the role that she is in now.
Funnily enough for someone who is now a principal, she said that her aspirations were never to be a leader, rather it was others around her who saw her potential for leadership through the relationships she built up with the students and staff. She said she has never been in it for the money, but rather for the outcomes for the students and that the relationships are what she loves about the job and the ability to make a difference.
I think that lately I have lost sight of this as I have been putting pressure on myself to take that next step financially because at the moment money is scarce in our household as we scrimp and save for the wedding and our honeymoon and then a mortgage after that. So instead of focussing on what I love about my job and how satisfied I am to be doing something that challenges and motivates me, I have been getting caught up on the little things- the things that ultimately do not matter.
So one session down and already I have learned some valuable lessons. I need to make sure that I seek out the reassurance I need so that I do not lose sight of the bigger picture and my place in it. It was also nice to confirm that my Principal is happy with the role I am taking in curriculum development and that she feels that I am contributing to the future direction of the school. This is important to me as I work really hard to create innovative and practical applications for curriculum in the classroom on a wider, program, scale and I wanted to make sure that this fitted in with her vision too.
Ultimately I have to get over my desire for certainty. I have to realise that I am doing what I love and for now, that is enough and not to be looking too far into the future, or focussing on the negatives. On the horizon is a new curriculum redevelopment for me to sink my teeth into and it is exciting and has infinite potential at this stage as we research and plan and start to make decisions on what form it will take. I'm looking forward to our next meeting!

Did I mention I don't deal well with uncertainty?

It seems that things are always changing in schools and that is something that makes them such exciting, dynamic places to work. It also makes them the perfect place for someone like me to work (I hate doing the same thing for too long and love a change and to broaden my horizons). Strangely though, although I love change and new challenges, I don't deal well with uncertainty and at the moment it seems that my position as I know it is uncertain. Our school is undergoing a leadership restructure. The proposed structure that was put forward to management committee this week left my position up for discussion and debate. Many decisions about the leadership structure have been made, however the classification of the curriculum innovation position is yet to be decided. There are all sorts of reasons why this position is problematic for the school. This becomes problematic for me too though because I don't really know where I stand and at the moment I am just waiting for a decision to be made about my future. The position will exist, but the debate is about the pay classification of the position and whether it will be classified as a leadership position. I thought that during this leadership restructure this would all be sorted out, however it seems as though it is far from sorted. All I can do at this stage is wait for further news and keep my fingers crossed.

How to create a team when the team won't turn up?

Yesterday I had a lunchtime meeting with the team that focussed around team building. There have been some rumblings from staff in the program that other staff are not pulling their weight and that a small number of staff are shouldering the burden of the other staff and 150 students on their own. In order to try and start building capacity in the team, I decided that we needed to get some lunchtime meetings (where lunch is provided) happening in order to get the conversation happening. We started with a Y chart on which everyone wrote their own personal ideas on what their ideal BYTES class looked like, felt like and sounded like. Once each person had done this, we combined responses on to one chart, which is now pinned up in my office as a reminder. We talked about the things that we needed to see improved and then each team member was given an individual goal setting sheet that asked them to imagine the words they would speak, the actions they would undertake etc if they were contributing to making this 'ideal' a reality. But here is the problem when you are working with staff. Of the 15 staff in the team, (and despite the three weeks notice) three couldn't come because of sporting committments, two could only come for half the meeting because of yard duty (I knew about that when I planned the meeting - it couldn't be helped) and one just forgot. Another turned up late after telling me he was definitely going to be there. What do you do about that sort of thing? It is frustrating because the meeting was organised a long time ago and these other things just "came up." It is frustrating because you put a lot of effort in (including buying food and drink) and some people don't bother to contribute. It is frustrating because one of the new staff that I was particularly trying to target because he is a classic "watcher" and not a participator was one of the ones that didn't turn up because of 'other' committments. Just like he often leaves the after school meetings early because he has family committments. It is difficult. I don't get a say in the staff who are in my team - the timetabler decides who she can fit in and people get to indicate their interest on their allottment form. This means that this year almost 1/2 the team are new, and this 1/2 of the team have been timetabled on together so they can't even learn from the experiences of others because they are all new. In the other 1/2 of the team there is not one single new person so they automatically work much better than the other team.
I guess this is one of the issues with dealing with busy people in a school environment. In an office it is expected that everyone turn up for their meetings so you can target the group as a whole. In a school, everyone has so many other committments to do with school that often they have things on that mean that they have to miss a meeting. It makes it hard to build that team spirit if there isn't a team there to build. I guess I have no choice really but to keep on plugging away. My goal is to now get them thinking about the type of skills we want to promote in our students in this program and then audit the curriculum with this is mind, improving, adding and making what we do stronger. I will continue and hopefully by the end of the year there will be an achievement to write about.

Sharing Stories

As part of this leadership course we are required to return to day three with a teaching story (two actually) that are "magical and memorable" that model our values or vision. I have been really stuck as to what to write about but I have an idea that I will develop here for now. As I was writing the post about Leadership philosophy I decided that I would attempt to use some of the techniques I had learnt in the leadership course in order to try to curb the misbehaviour of my Year 11 class. This years Year 11 class for me have been the worst behaved of the 5 classes I have ever taught. I have been at my wits end - and my main concern was not with my sanity but really with the quality of their learning. Due to the fact that they are rarely quiet whether it is me or one of their peers speaking, they learnt very little in class. Their social tendancies also meant that when given the opportunity to complete a task in class, they would rather talk. No amount of yelling, punishments or pointing out to them how insanely rude they were for talking over the top of each other seemed to make a difference and I could see them slipping behind fast. So here is what I did. Yesterday (the first day of term) we had a double. I went in there with little individual Y charts and asked them to imagine what their ideal English class would look like, feel like and sound like. We then compiled the responses onto a wall chart for display. I then asked them to come up with a list of things they could do as a class to achieve this ideal English class. From this we came to an agreement and wrote a list titled
"To create our ideal English class we must:" Once we had agreed on those, I asked them what the consequences would be if someone was acting inappropriately in class. They brainstormed a list of possible consequences and then we excluded those that were inappropriate (like public humiliation) and voted to come to an agreement on the procedure to follow if someone was behaving inappropriately. I also asked them to agree on a reward if they went a whole lesson without one person being given a warning for misbehaving. They voted for 5 minutes free time at the end of the lesson. I made a big deal of this and everyone wrote down the list, consequences and rewards on coloured paper with coloured pens and I gave them a plastic pocket to display it in the front of their folder.
The beauty of this is the EVERY student was involved and every student had their voices heard (despite the incessent chattering). They have come up with their own classroom rules and system of discipline and they are rewarded for following their own guidelines.
Now I'm certainly not suggesting that I just reinvented the wheel and that I am brilliant. However although I have used this method for Year 7s I have never used it in the senior school because I never imagined that the kids would respect the process and that it would work.
The amazing thing is that we went the whole lesson today without one person AT ALL getting a warning. For this class that is unheard of. And you know what - we actually had fun. And we had an intelligent, insightful conversation about an issue that involved the students actually learning from one another and engaging with the subject matter. Simply breaking the cycle, thinking laterally and allowing the students a say in their own management has transformed my english class. I never would have thought it was possible.

Leadership Philosophy Musings Part 1 - What do people want in a leader?

As part of the leadership course I am participating in we all have to write our own Leadership Philosophy really getting clear in our heads what sort of leader we want to be and what we hope to achieve with our teams. Below is my first attempt to begin to write out that philosophy. I am going to first look at what people want from their leaders and what I think they deserve from them.
When trying to determine what it is that I value in leadership, and therefore the type of leader I wish to be, I decided to think about my first couple of years of teaching and think about the leaders I was exposed to and the sorts of impact they had on me and the lessons I learned from them.
When I had just started teaching what I needed most was feedback and an opportunity to talk to people about my teaching and get advice and honest ideas about how I could improve. Really what I needed to encourage me to grow and take risks and take on new challenges, was validation that I was doing a good job and the knowledge that I was being appreciated. It was important to me to know that what I was doing was contributing to the team and to the school vision and the team vision.
In my first years of teaching I had amazing leaders, all of whom are still with me and still leading me. My mind thinks particularly about my AP (one whom I have discussed on this blog before and who is responsible for much of my present confidence and the reason why I love my job so much). This person was always there with her door open for advice, encouragement and a friendly word. Her ability to make you feel like you were someone she respected, relied upon and valued as an integral part of her team were things that had a big impact on me and on how I view leadership.
My KLA manager has been another person I admire and who has had a big impact on the way I lead. His manner when conducting meetings is amazing. His diplomacy is something I admire immensly, as is his ability to craft his faculty meetings so that despite the fact that there are many differing personalities and differing opinions in this very large faculty, harmony is always maintained, and a resolution and productive outcome is always obtained by the end of his meetings. The focus is always on the curriculum and how to obtain an outcome, never on the attitudes and negativity of certain members of staff and this is something that I aspire to. The ability to lead your team along with you in a positive direction despite the sometimes difficult environment of school life is something that is the mark of an effective and efficient leader and is something that I try to keep in mind when planning and conducting my own meetings. This person has always maintained an open door policy, able to offer friendship, support, understanding, ideas and focus for my sometimes scattered mind. I only hope that one day I will be the calm, thoughtful, wise and considerate person he is and that I will have the same sort of intuition with people that he seems to posess to allow him to respond to people in a positive way that reaffirms them and makes them feel reassured in their purpose.

So let me try to summarise these things in a way that makes them a possible inclusion in my own leadership philosophy:

I think that a leader should lead by example and be the very best leader they can be. I think that everyone deserves to be heard, to be trusted and valued in their contribution to the team, to be shown compassion, empathy and understanding and to be listened to without judgement. I think that people deserve to have their achievements acknowledged and celebrated and that this is one of the most important elements in building the confidence and capacity of your team.

I want to be the sort of person who leads through inspiration, not domination and I want to motivate and engage my team by enabling them and entrusting them to participate and contribute fully to achieving our mutual goals. I want to build a team environment that is trusting, collegiate, repectful, innovative and dynamic and one that utilises people's abilities and strengths, giving them purpose and celebrating the achievements of the team and the individual. I want to enable my team to achieve with me and without me. I want to set up a team that has such mutual responsibility and shared vision that any one of the team members could take over from me in an instant and none of the momentum would be lost.

As I was writing this I stopped in order to write up an action plan for my BYTES team. When term 3 begins, I will begin a series of fortnightly lunches with the team (2 meetings a term is not enough to get anything done) and I have planned out the first three of these meetings. These I have set up under three headings:

1. Team (Creating a vision for the team).
2. Values (What Qualities do we value in our students?)
3. Action Plan (Developing an action plan to improving student learning in our program).

This might be a lot to try and achieve in three lunchtimes but I have developed activities to get these things happening. I think that this is really important to set up the team this way before we embark on further developing our curriculum for the following years.

I am also brainstorming ways in which a session like this might be adapted to put some of the responsibility for learning back onto my Year 11s. They are the noisiest, most disengaged bunch of Year 11s i have ever taught and I think it is important that at some point before next year they develop a responsibility for their own behaviour and their own learning - after poor Exam results that they all deserved (lack of work, excessive talking in class, no drafting, planning, revising) they wanted me to justify why they got such bad marks. I need to do something before leading them to the lions of Year 12 so perhaps this is the new start we need for Semester II. I will keep pondering.

Holidays...what are they good for?

School holidays are really good for renewing your focus and energy. I have done a whole lot of nothing over these holidays - or nothing life-changing anyway and it is very nice to have the time to do nothing. So far I have: caught up with my mum on several occasions and spent time with her little family-day-care charges (very small and loving and cute); caught up with one of my university lecturers and a girl I went to uni with; purchased some beads for my jewellery making; corrected 26 SACs; written pages of ideas for the new Year 7 program; read half of Oscar & Lucinda by Peter Carey; met with the two friends I made at the Leadership course to discuss the work we have been doing as part of the course; been to the movies; done some baking (and more to come - the more I can get into the freezer before term starts again the better off I will be - so far I am at 4 meals and counting).
These are the things that I am yet to do but that need to be done: My year 9 BYTES website (my brother and I built it before the start of the year but it still has not had the finishing touches put on it and therefore still sits patiently waiting for its debut on my laptop); Read my Year 11 information and plan classes for them for Term 3; Read Richard III in preparation for the Year 12s and plan activities. If I can finish off all of these things I will feel quite pleased with the use of my time these holidays. I also need to write my leadership philosophy and some inspirational teaching story for this leadership course I am doing. I think I should probably work on that these holidays because otherwise it might get lost in the mire of term and all the things that need to be done.
One thing that plays on my mind. Sentences that begin like this: Oh, it must be so great to have a job where you get all these holidays... Anyone who is a teacher or who lives with a teacher would cringe at these words. I managed to bite my tongue before I answered (especially considering that the comment came from my housemate who does shift work, has 3 days off every week, six days off in a row every fourth week and about 6 weeks of holidays every year). The response I wish I had given is that I would greatly prefer to be in a job like his and get 18 days off every month but I'm never quick enough to be bitchy on the spot. So I just mumbled something and kept on cleaning the house before going back into the spare room to correct Year 12 SACS. Teaching is one of those jobs that is misunderstood and that everyone thinks they can have an opinion on. Unfortunately everyone has been to school at some time in their life and therefore everyone seems to think that they can have an opinion on how easy teachers get it. What upsets me about this is that I don't deign to judge other people's careers, wages, working hours and their holidays and yet it seems that everyone thinks they have the right to judge how hard teachers work. I don't go round saying "oh lawyers, they get paid so much and do nothing" or "people in retail have really got it easy - no responsibility, no one counting on them if they don't turn up to work." Think about the comments made about teachers though. Luckily my partner is great. When we're out and someone asks me what I do and then proceeds with "oh it must be so great to have all those holidays" it is James who comes to my defense, explaining the hours I work during term time, the amount of work that I bring home with me, the weekends lost to correction because there is no other time in the day to do it. At least I don't have to sound like a whinger because that is what everyone thinks that teachers are. If teachers are just whingers and they actually have it good then why is it that the retention rate for teaching is lower than in any other profession? Why is it that someone like me who is in their fifth year of teaching is a statistical anomally (generally graduates leave before they have taught 5 years).
I don't even know why I am writing about this. I guess I just hate being judged. I love my job and I hate having to defend myself to people. I guess there are teachers who are slack and who come to school at 8.45 and leave at 3.30 and who do the bare minimum. Just like there are people like this in every other walk of life. Then there are the rest of us who love what we do, work hard at it, are often at school from 7.30am to 5pm or even 7 when the school is shut by the cleaners. There are those of us who don't just do the bare minimum but who want to make a difference and what to improve outcomes for the students in their care and who join every committee they possibly can, who co-ordinate teams of staff, taking on extra responsibility, often with little financial gain. Teaching is a job that you cannot do for the love of money. There are many people I work with who are extremely talented and could get jobs out in industry that would pay them at least 20grand more than what they are getting paid teaching but they would rather have a job that they believe in that is making a difference than a job that pays well. If only there were more people who felt that way.

An Acknowledgement

I've been thinking a fair bit lately about what makes a good leader and the qualities that I admire in the leaders around me and this has prompted me to think about my relationship with the person at school who most closely leads me. I think the beauty of his leadership style is that I never feel like I am being told what to do - I feel like I am part of his team and that we work side by side to get work done. He includes me in the decisions being made and values my opinion and input in the projects he is working on. I am able to vent to him, question him, trust him, work with him as well as for him and he makes me feel like what I am doing has a purpose and is important to what is going on within the school in terms of the bigger picture.
At the moment I am excited about school and about the possibilities. At my school it seems like things are always happening and it is his inclusion of me in the new and exciting happenings around school that reaffirms to me that this is the place that I want to be and that all the challenge and innovation I need is right here in the place where I already work.
At the moment I'm just trying to do my bit. I'm trying to be as involved at work as possible and I'm trying to learn as much as possible about the school. This seems to be a time of renewal. New principal, new direction and once again a new beginning. I hope that when the dust settles I am revitalised and ready for whatever comes my way.

Today is my last day of term because tomorrow one of my mates from work is getting married. I'm really excited. When I went to wish him luck yesterday he told me that before I know it it will be me getting married and the thought made me swell up with joy just a little bit on the inside. I can't wait to be married which is very different from my previous experience of being engaged. Another friend from work got engaged too on the weekend so if they get married in the next two years that will make 5 weddings from our school. I think it is the age - there are a lot more of us 'young' ones now (and I am one of the eldest of the young ones which makes me feel a little nanna-ish) and it is that time I guess where you are ready to meet someone and settle down. I guess I just need to enjoy where I am right now and stop wishing that I had everything yesterday!
On to work things - I have started working with our Teaching and Learning AP on a new curriculum model for Year 7. Due to the fact that we recently got funding to knock down an existing 50 year old building and create a new admin wing and Year 7 centre we are busily planning the sort of curriculum changes that might befit such a new building that has all the resources that Year 7 have previously had no access to. Building is due to start over this year's Christmas holidays and finish before the end of next Year so there is no time to lose. This is the part that I love - starting with a blank slate and imagining the possibilities. Thinking about all those things that you never thought were an option and that suddenly are now possible and working out how you can produce the best learning outcome for the Year 7s.
I am only taking home with me tonight a folder of Year 12 SACs ( a couple of hours work) and general planning for my three classes as well as this Year 7 stuff. I also have some long-term projects like the BYTES website that I would like to tidy up and get happening once and for all. I will use the holidays to get myself up to date and then start with a clean slate. Hopefully my housemate isn't home too much over the holidays or I might have to find myself somewhere else to be in order to escape. We don't have internet anymore either since he decided to stop paying the bill so I have to do something about getting some form of internet so that I don't have to drive to my mum's (30 mins away) just to use the internet. I will go crazy if I can't check my email! Anyway - here's to another long term (damn the people who set the term dates for vic) and to another new beginning next term.

Pressure

Lately I have been putting a lot of pressure on myself. In every way. Pressure at work to be involved in as much as I possibly can be. Pressure at home to save for the wedding with a ridiculous budget that takes most of the fun out of living. Pressure to work out whether we should go overseas for our honeymoon or put that money towards a home so we can get into the property market sooner (in the hope that we can actually afford something more than a one bedroom hovel somewhere). Sometimes when I really think about the future and about where I want to be the future seems pretty bleak. That is the way it is for people of my generation. We are faced with soaring house prices, hecs debts and years of study, meeting our partners later in life and it seems the same rules that applied for our parents just don't anymore. I know I need to focus on the positives and I know that once we actually buy something, things will seem a whole lot brighter but at the moment it seems like time is ticking away and we are going nowhere. We are renting from my partner's mother which should be cheaper but works out to be almost as expensive as living somewhere else because of the extra bills and petrol that comes with living so far from work. And until his mum's new house is complete, we are also sharing a rather small house with my partner's cousin, something which I find difficult because I enjoy my own space. I guess sometimes I struggle with control. It seems at the moment like I am not in control of where I am heading and I don't like this feeling at all.
The truth of the situation though is that I am in control. I am the one that is putting pressure on myself to control things that I cannot control and that I should just move on from. I am the one that is wanting everything yesterday. It is hard when you have found the person that you want to be with to be patient while you set up your lives together. I want everything yesterday - the wedding, the house, the family and it seems that something has to give. I don't want to give up on my dreams but perhaps I need to work out what I really value and then prioritise. Perhaps the european trip may need to be put on the back-burner until we have achieved some of our other goals. Whatever the answer I think I need to let go a bit. Stop trying to control the things I can't and stop trying to plan out my entire future. Easier said than done...

relationships

I have been thinking about this post for a while now and have restarted it a couple of times. I want to talk about relationships. I think my cosmic challenge this year is relationships. Someone out there wants me to learn some lessons about dealing effectively with others in difficult circumstances. And I am having some difficult circumstances. As I have mentioned before, life at home involves not only my relationship with my partner (which is more a pleasure than a concern) but my relationship with his cousin, our housemate. When I moved into this house over 11 months ago I thought that it was a short term arrangement. It has turned out not to be at all. I have been paying for storage for all of my stuff for nearly a year and James and I are still sharing a house with someone else which is difficult when we both want our own space. The issue for me is that my partner and his cousin have fallen in to a passive aggressive relationship. They both annoy each other but no-one talks about it and they just ignore it on the surface and then do little things behind the surface to try and make the point. I have moved in and have fallen into the pattern of being annoyed about things but not talking about them because I feel like it is not my place because I moved in to their house and I don't want to feel like I am making anyone uncomfortable. The problem is it is uncomfortable regardless because no-one really says what they are feeling.
I think that there is a lesson I need to learn about this and that is about taking control of the situation and getting things out in the open regardless of how difficult that may be because not talking about things is not working. One of the things that has become an issue is the fact that I do all the housework. If I was being given financial incentive to do all the housework I wouldn't mind so much - pay me and I will work. But the fact is that I spend just as many hours at work as my partner and his cousin and then I do all the cooking (for my parter and I ) and the housework for the entire house. The cousin does not even take the rubbish out, has never once swept the floors and barely even does his own dishes. My partner does his share (but works 6 days a week so has less time to do it in). I have decided that I am going to deal with it once and for all because I am resenting the housework and silently wanting to punch the cousin in the head every time I see him. So I am going to call a meeting of the house and I have drawn up a list of chores that I am going to get them to volunteer for - they can choose what they are happy to do and then somehow I have to hope that they do it so I don't become the nagging mother.

It was something in this leadership course that made me think about relationships. Trin made the comment that relationships are very difficult to repair once they have been damaged because that trust is not there anymore. I think that one of my lessons for this year is about being positive in every situation and in the way that I deal with people, regardless of how tired/overworked/sick/frantic I am. I have had a couple of experiences this year with a couple of people at work, one who I felt betrayed me in a professional sense and another who has always been an issue to deal with (this person doesn't like me and don't even make an effort to be civil) and these have led me to realise that it is important to always be open and honest in your relationships at work and to value them and to endeavour to make every interaction with people a positive one. This is really hard to do when you are working to a deadline and suddenly everyone wants to come and see you and chat to you for no particular reason. It is hard to do when the person you share an office with and the person who has interloped their way into spending a vast majority of their time in your office have no work to do and proceed to talk crap whilst you are trying to work.
I just think that I have been internalising things way too much this year. I have been focussing on the things that I have no control of and not changing the things that I can control. I have been focussing on the negative and not turning these things into positives. I have been playing the martyr when I should be playing the problem solver. I am sick of being a whinger. I am sick of not taking control of the things that I can. I am going to endeavour to change that. It is going to take concious effort but it is also going to take looking at things a different way. Being more patient and thinking about things with my problem solving hat on, not my venting hat. I am hoping that this will bring more positive outcomes.

Goal Setting and the Master Mind Partnership

As part of the follow up to this leadership course we have been given partners (or in my case two partners) to help us in accomplishing our goals visions and intentions. They do this through weekly meetings, support, questioning and clarifying of goals and ensuring that ultimately we win. It is a reciprocal relationship and I am just as responsible for my partner's successes and failures as I am for my own.


This brings me to goal setting. There were some ideas that stuck out to me from the two day meetings that I want to record here in order to help me clarify what I would like to achieve.

In order to effect change in your workplace and in your staff you can't take people too far out of their comfort zone at once - rather you have to gradually stretch their comfort zone so that they don't even realise you have taken them out of it.

• The way we listen delivers a message - what message do I want to be delivering?
• 4 leadership qualities: Flexibilty, Adaptability, Creativity, Innovativeness.
• Quantam leaps are based on a firm foundation of the fundamentals.
• It is impossible to lead without a philosophy of leadership
• You win some, you lose some - do the best you can with what you have at the time.
• Clarity check your definitions within your team - make sure everyone is on the same page.
• Learn to read the signals from your team-members and use them.
• Prepare and your chance will come.
• Strengthen your own talents and use them to make the team better.
• Credibility builds trust. If you give your word then keep it - or change it responsibly.
• They may not remember what you taught them. They will always remember how you made them feel.
• Don't ever drain your relationships - fill them up.
• Observe the energy in the room - Did you raise or lower the energy - are you giving or taking?
• Teach people to go to the source and talk about it. Open communication is important.

These are just a few of the things that I thought were important to record and revisit from time to time, however there were a couple that stood out to me - things that resonated with me because they are things that I feel are shortcomings in my own leadership and it is these that will inform where I go from here.

I guess these three below are my long-term leadership goals. The ones that I am going to try and keep in mind as I work day in and day out:

• Listen to understand - really listen to the people around you, particularly when people are coming to you for advice or leadership and don't listen from a place of judgement - listen to really understand where they are coming from.
• Credibility builds trust. If you give your word then keep it - or change it responsibly. Follow through on all the things you say you are going to do - or be careful before you promise something if you don't think it is something you can achieve.
• Following on from this, this includes for me following through on all the little things that I am responsible for. I need to make sure that I go back and cross every t and dot every i because too often I fear that I lose those tiny details at the end of one task in the beginning of the next task. I focus my attention too often on the next deadline and don't stop and refocus and work out what needs to be finished off and tied up. I don't want the forgetting of a few minor details to detract from the bigger picture of the work I am doing.

The following are the things I want to achieve before the end of next week:

• Organising the Year 8 Chant-off day down to the last detail.
• Completing the BYTES website.
• Organising Guest speakers for BYTES.
• Set up a lunchtime BYTES discussion group to organise the next unit.
• Follow up Cyber Safety.
• Meet with BYTES team leaders to touch base and organise next unit.

Not sure if this is what I should be doing but I think these are the things I need to do to get myself on an even playing field. Then I can think more proactively. Tonight I will meet with Imelda and Julie and we will discuss!

Another new Beginning

I think I have discovered in myself a new beginning. For two days this week I attended a leadership course for women. It is a three day course, with the third day in August and between now and then we have homework to do.

I think I sought out this leadership course for both a concious and an unconcious reason. Conciously: I have been running a team at school now for 2 1/2 Years and I have never had any formal leadership training to help me develop my skills. I am also hoping to continue taking on more responsibility within the school and this year, running all the Junior school (7-9) curriculum programs has certainly left me busier than I have ever been before, and dealing with more people than ever before. I believe in constantly learning and improving and I think I certainly have a long way to go in developing and working on my leadership skills.

It was not until the second day of the course though that I started to really clarify why I had subconciously sought out leadership training. I think that this last year or so I have been searching. I have been feeling lost at school, not sure what the future holds for me and unsure how to deal with the uncertainty (I really don't deal well with uncertainty). When you don't know where your career is headed it makes it really difficult to set goals and to imagine yourself achieving them. I have been loving my job; don't get me wrong - to be challenged everyday is a satisfying thing to me and I feel that the more I am challenged the more I strive to achieve. The only problem is that I have been feeling that perhaps some of the things I am doing and the skills that I feel I have to offer are going unnoticed. Or not even that they are not noticed, but that they are not acknowledged.

Part of this course asks us to create our own philosophy of leadership. Kind of a mission statement to live by I guess and in brainstorming this idea, I started with what I think people deserve or expect from a leader.
This is what I came up with:

• compassion
• understanding
• to be heard
• to be trusted and to trust
• to be valued
• to be proud of their achievements
• to be treated with respect

Through discussion with others in the group I clarified and added that people want to be acknowledged and affirmed in their roles.

I realised that in making this list I had thought back to my first year of teaching and remembered the influence that one of my AP's had on me. The support, encouragement and affirmation that I got from this person was one of the fundamental building blocks of my confidence as a teacher. Having someone who celebrated my successes, gave me confidence to take on more and encouraged me to challenge myself further.

What is also obvious to me is what a difference it makes to someone when the support that they once had is no longer there. Not that I think this person has decided they no longer like me and no longer want to encourage me, but in taking on more responsibility themselves, this person has less time to spend reaffirming me and letting me know that I am doing a good job and that I am on the right track and this has left me a little bereft. The problem for me is that this person is the one who I answer to, the one who is in charge and without that reassurance from them that I am doing a good job and that I am appreciated I become concerned that I am just floating along and going no-where and that the things I am working towards don't necessarily have a place in the school's vision.

Understanding my own need for validation and affirmation has made me realise an important lesson in my own leadership. Constantly tell your staff that you appreciate what they are doing and celebrate the things they do well. Ensure your team has a vision and that everyone knows their role in the team to bring about change and thus ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goal. I don't see myself as an insecure person (in fact sometimes I think I am a little too sure of myself) but I think that all it would take for me to have a bit more confidence that I am in the right place and that I am doing a good job would be to hear it.

A time of renewal and revitalisation

This year has been an interesting one for me already. For the first time since my first year of teaching I have wondered once or twice whether or not I have bitten off more than I can chew. I have the same classes as last year (minus some BYTES periods) and I have taken on the organisation of two other programs. This leaves me in charge of the programs from Year 7-9 and has given me the opportunity to execute organisation on a scale not seen by me before! I decided that since I will be getting married next year and might need some time off for a honeymoon, that this year I would cram it choccas with extra responsibilities. So add to my 7-9 programs my membership on Curriculum Committee, Managment Committee and School Council as well as involvement in our Building Futures bid, and leadership restructure and you can see that I am a girl that spends very little time at home. So little in fact that I actually missed the VCE formal (I have been to every one since I started teaching) because I wanted to have one night in two weeks where I was home before 9.30.
Having said that, I feel that despite the stress and the new challenges that are coming with this year, there are great personal rewards. I am enjoying the new challenge (although it sometimes makes it hard to go to sleep at night) and I am enjoying the number of new skills I am learning this year. I am loving the people I am working with and the feeling that I am making a difference. I am enjoying the feeling of renewal as the school welcomes it's former AP as Principal and some long over-due changes are made. I like the feeling that the school is looking towards the future, and not just concerned with maintenance. I like being a part of this.
A recent PD on wellbeing allowed me to make a change in my diet and a new gym membership has seen me take some time out from my schedule for myself - to ensure that I am happy and healthy and feel good about myself. I was hoping to get rid of my pot belly in time for the wedding and I am now well on the way! This year has also made me realise the importance of having this time to myself and looking after myself. When work is taking up the majority of your time and your headspace you need to make sure that you are at least attempting a balanced lifestyle.
I have also started a new organisational regime that may sound somewhat like a cult but involves an almost sickening affection for my newly acquired brother p-touch labeller. I am organising myself in a way that I have not before - with the help of the aforementioned labeller and many a manilla folder. Now I just need a filing drawer in my new office and I will be the most organised I have ever been in my life. It is a great feeling to take control - especially when there is so much going on that a small break in the chaos allows you to get back on your feet again. I am looking forward to the holidays. Partly because i will be able to rest and regroup but mainly because it will give me an opportunity to get my head above water and get myself up to date with all of my work without people giving me more work to do. Regardless of what happens I am enjoying the new opportunities and I feel like this year, like all that have come before it so far, will be bigger and better than the last.