Professional Leadership

Leadership.  

It's interesting what this entails sometimes.  It leaves me wondering if we shared it with our students - our journey - that they may have some insight into where we want them to head?

Today I sat through a photoshoot for my new profile shot for TeachEXPO which I'm presenting at in July.  I find it hard to fathom how I've come a full 360 degrees from where I was at last year.  From struggling to see how my sense of self fit within my teaching persona, to now, feeling that I'm more comfortable and excited about my role than I've ever been.

It's not just the technology.  The e-learning is fun, and important.... but I think it's the fact that through this I feel learning environments are now becoming more relevant to the real world and how it's altered over the past 50 years.  I no longer feel like I'm in the classroom asking students to do something irrelevant.  Now I'm looking for more and more ways to link what we're doing to relevant tasks because it's easier to do so.  I no longer feel I'm asking them to do the impossible... I'm now working through relevant and challenging tasks alongside them and we are all winning.  I'm doing what my Leadership Challenge book suggests - I'm handing over to others in order for them to develop their leadership.  And it's opening up ideas and passion for learning that I thought I'd lost.

I'm thinking about how I'm formulating my profile and thinking about how we could offer students leadership to do the same.  Could we get our students involved in this planning process?  How much more would we get buy-in if we could have students create the learning.  Get them to find the tools, build in their passions, create the plan, develop their profiles and present.  How cool would that be for developing leadership.  Giving our students a real voice.  They could then take this to a class and teach their lesson.  The teacher could be present and they could then learn too.  Maybe we could start with small groups.  My student could be released to work with that class's specialists and the teacher and they could take the lesson back to class too.  Wow.  Potential.  How to make it happen?