Showing posts with label ConnectED. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ConnectED. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Cultural Tails (Tales) - The Story Everyone Tells

de·us ex ma·chi·na
/ˌdāəs ˌeks ˈmäkənə,ˌdāəs ˌeks ˈmäakənə/
noun
  1. an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel.

Our lives are a series of stories that evolve in quantum ways every second as we are affected by the realities in our environments and the decisions we make surrounding them. Much of what goes on around us is beyond our control. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Psychology, it's phenomenological in the sense that,
the discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.
How capably we are able to engineer our own stories depends on our ability to accept that the phenomena that surround us is essentially beyond our control. Sometimes, as in literature or theatre, a deus ex machina is helpful in resolving the seemingly hopeless life situations that are ultimately beyond our control, but not beyond our personal influence and ability to internalize and accept. Partly as a response to what I wrote recently about how the path of teaching chose me, and also just because it's front of mind, this resolve is what I want to talk about today. 

Essential to the stories of our lives, recognizing deus ex manchina that have unexpected power to resolve a sense of hopelessness, or what Victor Frankl would characterize as a lack of purpose, is critical to our resilience and happiness. Viktor Frankl's (1946) Man's Search for Meaning chronicles his experiences as a concentration camp inmate and describes his psychotherapeutic method of finding a reason to live. According to Frankl, the book intends to answer the question "how was everyday life in a concentration camp reflected in the mind of the average prisoner?" He observed that prisoners who found something to do every day appeared less vulnerable to the guards, and subsequently were judged as useful in one way or another; not as expendable. I simply cannot even imagine the horror of that reality, but nonetheless, it was documented by Frankl, (perhaps that was his purpose in attempting to make any sense of the horror,) and it makes sense to me.

I took away from this book the notion that without purpose, there is nothing. I think I already knew this on some level, but not to the point where I was considering the concept as part of my minute-by-minute navigation of daily challenges. I have come to realize implicitly that purpose needs to be at the core of everything I do. Purpose is a deus ex machina that resolves nearly all hopeless situations in life. It's a very critical one and we may need help finding it sometimes, but we have to have it. Hope is an action word.

Saturday, April 11, 2020

A Real Emergency in Education- Crisis As Opportunity...

Let's face it, to some people everything is an emergency.

A Chinese symbol for crisis is made up of two parts:
danger and opportunity…
                                    _
Crisis as Opportunity (wéi ji) 

Danger – originally pictured as a man on the edge of a precipice
Opportunity – a reminder of the seemingly small but important opportunity that can come out of danger

There is controversy surrounding the symbol above and its interpreted meaning, but that's for other people to worry about. For the sake of the point I'm making, I believe as interpreted, the idea behind the meaning of the symbol above is very important. How it's further interpreted in practice is exponentially more important.

A Taoist story tells of an old man who accidentally fell into the river rapids leading to a high and dangerous waterfall. Onlookers feared for his life. Miraculously, he came out alive and unharmed downstream at the bottom of the falls. People asked him how he managed to survive. "I accommodated myself to the water, not the water to me. Without thinking, I allowed myself to be shaped by it. Plunging into the swirl, I came out with the swirl. This is how I survived."
Emergencies are often what we make of them. 

I can't tell you how many times I've had to address the emergent situation that someone dared to park in someone else's regular parking spot in our staff parking lot. 
e·mer·gen·cy
/əˈmərjənsē/
noun
  1. a serious, unexpected, and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Instructional Leadership...


I was very fortunate to be able to attend ConnectED at the Calgary Science School (CSS) on May 25. I wasn't able to attend on Friday the 24th, but was thrilled to participate as a receiver, and also a facilitator at the conference on Saturday. Glendale Sciences and Technology School (GSTS), where I teach and learn, is connected to CSS, and I've heard many good things about the school. Ours is a collaborative connection that we would like to grow into an even more collaborative partnership that allows both of our schools to mutually benefit from the other through sharing of resources, ideas, projects etc.

I facilitated a session on Glendale's Empathy Reboot Project on Saturday afternoon. It was great to share with folks from Alberta and British Columbia who attended the session, and I learned a lot from them as well. What I wanted to share here though is a really cool story about instructional leadership. I attended a session hosted by the Superintendent of CSS, Dr. Gary McKinnon, and Dr. Pam Adams from the University of Lethbridge. I had the pleasure of learning from Dr. McKinnon four years ago during a summer leadership program for beginning school administrators at Olds College, and have been working with Dr. Adams this past year on an administrative growth plan project within my school, so knowing how knowledgeable they both are, I was curious to hear what they had to say. Their discussion revolved around leadership in schools. At one point Dr. McKinnon spoke about instructional leadership and openly asked the question, "can students be instructional leaders?" (For the record I believe they most definitely can.)
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