Assignment 1b thoughts

Assignment 1b submitted - not the greatest of jobs but with my husband having some surgery and not able to deal much with the kids and then getting violently ill took about a week out of my time, then my son getting ill, getting better and going in for dental surgery, this took another 4 days out and then having to look after him when he was out. So all in all I think I had around 4 days before the due date to work on the assignment. As long as I pass I think I will be happy for this assignment. Now to focus on the next one - but first I really want to spend some time on the readings that are in the unit. I feel like I have missed some points about the main thrust of the articles and the unit and want to relook and write something about them. A little time consuming but it has to be done. I do have Saturday to do some work, my wonderful husband is taking the kids to his mother's for the night (although there is an ulterior motive there - he is going to a concert!) so even though I won't wake up with my son on his birthday on Sunday I will have some time to work on my studies for a day. Then Sunday morning I will get everything ready for his party!

I found the self assessment interesting to look at and to try and focus it on myself, I wonder if it would have been worth it to do a group assessment too? Not sure, it is easy to be critical of others in the group but hard for you to look at yourself and critique your participation and work load. The annotated bibliography was fine but the word limit was a concern to try and convey an appropriate evaluation of the work. Oh well on to looking at the articles now.

Group collaboration

What an interesting and vibrant aspect to an assignment - group work across distance and sometimes time! The first thought was how was this going to work, where the other group members as keen as me? And all the other thoughts that go with working in groups - I remember a number of times hearing and reading that working in groups is the hardest aspect to master, we as teachers love kids working in groups but when we are asked to work in groups in fills us with dread! It is hard to give up the control that is inherent in any person who makes their own decisions, responsible for their own marks, now they are responsible for others and have to come to agreement with other people. Maybe it is a fear that our views are not worthwhile or there will be criticism or maybe it is that fact that we think we know best and others can not know more than we do???

But what I found was that my group were as keen as I was, as eager to trial new ways of working together and that we worked well together. My only criticism would be the ease at which we found ourselves off track and the need to bring us back onto topic. Which allows my thoughts to drift to my EO talking about the construction of video games and the market at which they aimed - there was a need to try and pull in the female market and they wondered how to do that - they found it through social networking - online gaming and suddenly their games increased in sales, even war games because it was the ability to get online and talk that drew the people not the game itself. I found myself reminded of this a number of occasions during out Skype sessions. Oh how I love Skype! If every one were on Skype I could throw out my phone I think!

Another quick note - a lesson on academic and professional was learned - academic = peer reviewed; professional = not as an easy statement.

Concerns and issues

It is interesting to work through this assignment with group members. But the assignment itself is quite vague in what it is after and what we need to do. I have no problems with the readings and topic of leadership and I understand the importance of the TL as leader but what gets me is where is the instruction in Educational leadership that principals do for TLs and the role they play in the school? We know what we can do, we are specialist teachers but principals often don't have the understanding that the TL as a specialist teacher is and should be part of the leadership team. A lot of principals don't see the relevance of the TL in leadership and I know we should be our own advocates but when is there the time to do this? A lot of the time they see us as 'copping' out of the teaching stream, we don't do the same work - in fact I think it would be thought that we don't have the same workload as a teacher. Yet here we are doing a Masters degree to gain the qualification that TLs should have and it is underrated by a number of staff, both within the school and within the education system. I think there should be a broader look at the role of the TL as leader, not just in the course with ambiguous assignments but in other courses for other leaders in the school. We shouldn't have to be pushing our role, constantly justifying our inclusion in leadership decisions across the school. This would tie in with government views on the time allocation for TLs - every school should have at least a TL working 0.5 load and in a school of 200 or more it should be heading to a full time TL for all the jobs we are meant to be doing. Advocacy is all well and good, educating is all well and good but as new staff come the cycle starts again.

Back to the assignment - a ppt about an aspect of Organisation Theory, in a group where you have to find alternate ways to communicate. Again I understand the purpose for it but in a time where people are working full time and can't use the day to communicate then have to find a time at night where people have different commitments and a short time frame to achieve it I am unsure how effective it is. The purpose of the assignment is still a little unclear and at times it seems like it is too easy at times and that we are just regurgitating information without getting into the deep thinking about the theories.

I have enjoyed a number of the readings, especially Donham's and I like reading the Visionary... text as these are relating directly to schools and TLs as a number of others are really aiming it at the Prinicpal or Manager. Still going through some of the readings so back to the grind stone...