EDC639 Book Notes

Author[ Lambert, Linda
Title[ The Constructivist Leader
]Additional Authors
Author2[ Deborah Walker
Author3[ Diane P. Zimmerman
Author4[ Joanne E. Cooper

 Book Information     

Publisher[ Teachers College Press
Location[ New York
Year[ 1995
Edition[
Pages[ 219

 Content Description     

Keywords[
1. Educational leadership — United States
2. School management and organization — United States
3. Constructivism (Education) — United States
4. School administrators —United States
5. Educational change — United States
]

Abstract[
Introduction
1. Learning and Leading Theory: A Century in the Making
2, Toward a Theory of Constructivist Leadership
3. Constructing School Change
4. Leading the Conversations
5. The Linguistics of Leadership
6. The Role of Narrative and Dialogue in Constructivist Leadership
7. The School District as Interdependent Learning Community
8. Reflections on Community: Understanding the Familiar in the Heart of the Stranger
9. The Preparation of Constructivist Leaders
10. Constructing the Future of Schooling ]

Author[ Sergiovanni, Thomas J.
Title[ Rethinking Leadership – A Collection of Articles
]Additional Authors
Author2[
Author3[
Author4[

Book Information
Publisher[ SkyLight Training and Publishing, Inc.
Location[ Arlington Heights. IL
Year[ 1999
Edition[
Pages[ 178

Content Description
Keywords[
]

Abstract[
PROLOGUE
SECTION 1: LEADERSHIP AS A MORAL CRAFT
* Leadership and Excellence in Schooling
* Administering as a Moral Craft
* New Sources of Leadership Authority
* Leadership as Stewardship

SECTION 2: THE DEVELOPMENTAL STAGES OF LEADERSHIP
* Adding Value to Leadership Gets Extraordinary Results
* Why Transformational Leadership Works and How to Provide It
* The Roots of School Leadership
* Why We Should Seek Substitutes for Leadership

SECTION 3: LEADING THE LEARNING COMMUNITY
* Changing Our Theory of Schooling
* Relationships in Communities
* Getting Practical
* Small Schools, Great Expectations ]

Author[ Shea, Gordon F
Title[ Mentoring: How to Develop Successful Mentor Behaviors
]Additional Authors
Author2[
Author3[
Author4[

Book Information
Publisher[ Crips Learning
Location[ Menlo Park, CA
Year[ 2002
Edition[ 3
Pages[ 104

Content Description
Keywords[
]

Abstract[
Personal Mentoring Reflections (Journal)
PART 1: Mentoring as an Art
PART 2: Is Mentoring for You?
PART 3: Understanding the Mentees’ Needs
PART 4: Postive Behaviors
PART 5: Behaviors to Avoid
PART 6: Mentor-Mentee Gains
PART 7: Special Situations

Chapter Information
Author[ Shea, Gordon
Title[ Part 1: Mentoring as an Art ]NOTES
Abstract[
PART 1 – MENTORING AS AN ART
Have You Been Mentored? (p4)
1. “Aha” experience: Biblestudy leader, Greg, when I was 15-years-old, that moment affected the next 15-years of my life. His role, however, was as a “fleeting catalyst” in that it was more the moment that changed the course of history for me than the person whom I shared it with.

2. Meaningful Quote: None that I can think of. Only one that comes to mind is not in a mentoring moment but a hurtful crack by a “friend” who said five or six years ago, when discussing me finding a mate, “well, by this time all the good ones are taken.” That has caused me to endeavor to prove this person wrong.

3. Uncovered unrealized talent: Angel DeNofa, a musician and artist who played music with me after church on Sundays when I was at Loyola Marymount (it was a foresquare church). She helped empower me to go from playing my guitar in a backroom to taking it out on the stage, eventually playing in front of audiences of several hundred.

From Legend to Challenge (p6)
* Knowledge of how societal systems work: Mom – I watched how she managed her relationship with dad; later it was anyone who was in-charge (pros and cons based on their “success”).
* Values: Mom and dad, biblical romanticism
* Technical competence: self-taught, given some space to draw and dream by mom & dad as a kid
* Character growth mom & dad, religious values:
* Knowledge of how to behave: Mom, female friends
* Understanding of the world: Parents, college teachers
* Understanding of how to get things done: still trying to figure that one out
* Moral development: see “character growth” & “values”
* Mental & physical health: mental?? Not sure, probably teachers and given room by folks to doodle and dream; physical – product of So Cal environment, everyone had to try to look good
* Understanding other peoples POV: life . . . moving from home culture to school culture, asking religious questions, moving from catholic to pentecostal to academic . . . awareness of other POVs more than “understanding.

A Variety of Mentoring Relationships (p9)
1. Highly Structured/Short Term: I was assigned a “mentor” teacher during my first year at my previous school – this teacher, however, never met with me (or the other new teacher), for the purposes of mentoring and seemed rather “put out” that he had to work with the two new teachers.

2. Highly Structured/Long Term: None

3. Informal/Short Term: My first teaching job, I paired myself to the other “veteran” 6th grade teacher – I consider this informal because it wasn’t an assignment for her, but a survival skill from me, a proved to be mutually beneficial for both of us.

4. Informal/Long Term: My relationship with the director of technology at my previous district, it started when he came out to help our school begin our Magnet program. He was a real friend when I was the only one who understood the technical difficulties that I faced getting that school ramped up. He was a good example of how to get things done and how difficult it is to get things done with all of the political tithes that must be “paid off.” It was a good thing to have a friend in a “high place,” but also a lesson on little can be done under some circumstances.

Sharing Life Experience (p11)
1. unusual learning experience: During the late 70’s/early 80’s I did (performed) some music, so much of what I saw was “behind the scenes” but I don’t remember anyone taking me under their wing. Had someone done that it might have led to a longer “career.” I usually made friends with whomever was in-charge, but didn’t necessarily attach myself to someone’s guidance. But whether it was performing or later working a few music venues as a journalism major, I enjoyed that “other” perspective.

2. Unusual mentoring experience: I’m trying to remember some time when someone might have taken me aside for that important lesson, but I really can’t think of one. [Sigh]

3. Unusual experience provided by self: I can’t think of any one particular experience, but I can say that much of my thoughts about teaching is to provide that “other side of the coin” encounter for my students. When I talk broadcasting journalism to fifth and sixth graders, when I helped second graders create commercials, when I helped first graders become comfortable on camera, it was all about taking parts of their lives that they were familiar with but wasn’t normally part of their “school life” and bringing them to the task at hand.

Identifying Our Life Helpers (p13)
1. Direction Shift: I’ve had plenty of “directional shifts,” I should be able to think of someone who played a role. The biblestudy guy, Greg, was certainly a catalyst for changing directions in my life.

2. Growth, depth: When I think about this one, I think about those who would have been good examples of those values. There was probably at least one professor at each university along the way who inspired me to move myself further along, mostly by example than by the actual relationship

3. Just at the Right time help: My best friend, Creagan, has often been there to see that my little boat doesn’t get swamped by the big bad waves that I challenge myself with.

4. Spontaneous? Yeah, I’m sure that Creagan stepped in a number of times before I even knew what was happening. Friends can be good that way.

What Mentors Do (p14)
Mentors . . . TO ME FOR THEM
* Set high performance expectations Y Y
* Offer Challenging ideas Y Y
* Help build self-confidence Y Y
* Encourage professional behavior Y Y
* Offer friendship
* Confront neg. behaviors & attitudes
* Listen to personal problems
* Teach by example
* Provide growth experiences
* Offer quotable quotes
* Explain how the org. works
* help far beyond their duties
* Stand by their mentees in critical situations
* Offer wise counsel
* Encourage winning behavior
* Trigger self-awareness
* Inspire to excellence
* Share critical knowledge
* Offer encouragement
* Assist with careers

Reaching Out to Another Person (p16)
* One time when you reached out: I had a student whose mother was battling cancer, I remember taking great care with her journal writing, tryng to make sure that she was comfortable expressing her concerns and worries. I don’t know how much it helped, her mom eventually went into remission, but I hope that it helped keep her “boat afloat” during a difficult time.

* One story you read: None come to mind.

* Mentoring experience, unusual: I think that this one lies at the center of understanding my own “mentee” experience. While there was no one teacher, or any one church with whom I bonded over the years, I spent a very long time buried in the pages of the Bible looking for meaning. The person that I was then would perhaps have claimed then that my mentors were the Old Testament writers, Jesus, Paul and other Apostles (particularly John, I rather like reading his writings). I guess that makes it a bit hard on flesh-and-blood mentors when I constantly comparing them with the Biblical texts but that was the mode of the time.

]

ta ta, Di

Chapter Information
Author[ Shea, Gordon
Title[ Part 2: Is Mentoring for You? ]

NOTES
Abstract[
PART 2: IS MENTORING FOR YOU?

Sharing Resources (p21)
Work: I have the benefit of having been a classroom teacher before becoming the lab teacher, I had the benefit of working with technology before becoming a teacher. In the latter I wasn’t constrained to do things “the way they’ve always been done” because I didn’t know the ways they’d been done. Thus, using technology in ways not foreseen even by the technology designers made perfect sense to me. In the former I have the experience to empathize with the skeptism of my contemporaries who see these things as expensive toys that are more work than their worth.

Things I like to do: Writing, watching TV, observing, losing myself in a good story, trying to connect with the thoughts and feelings of another without losing myself.

Education/Training: diverse, writing, drawing, mechanical and artistic, in my first incarnation I saw myself as an artist (doodler and songwriter) who happened to fall into technological forms of expression. As a kid I loved to draw, watch the astronauts on TV, and build cardboard rocketships for my G.I. Joe with my best friend in his backyard. In Junior high, my friend’s family had an 8mm movie camera and we set about to film the great american western, 1970’s style. Then just as teenage-angst and confusion set in I picked up the guitar and started writing songs about god, love and religion like I knew what I was writing about. In less than ten-years I’d penned over sixty songs, most of which I’ve fortunately forgotten, a few still lingering on aging cassette tapes somewhere. Besides those “darker” physical concerns that populate a young man’s mind, my writing and searching was also propelled by the pressures of being a “Charismatic Christian” religious studies major at Jesuit Loyola Marymount University, then continuing my studies as a slightly more worldly biblical studies major at Fundamentalist Biola University. Toward the end of my time at Biola I’d fallen into my communcations technician job at Pacific Bell (then called Pacific Telephone and Telegraph) which started a whole other line where I developed my troubleshooting skills and eventually become a hardware geek tearing out computer components like a pit-crew mechanic. One marriage and divorce later, I found myself working on a second BA at CSU Fullerton, first in Anthropology then later in Journalism. Toward the end of my degree program I picked up the camera again and began to experiment with doing reports on video tape instead of as a talking head reading words. I also discovered that I like helping my younger collegues work through their assignments and started to look into the possibility of teaching. When I started working on my teaching credential at Chapman University I really started using all of my experiences with writing, music, video, computers to bring more to my classroom experiences than talkings heads and papers.

Hobbies: Special skills: Passions: Other Assets: I think I pretty much covered these ideas in the above text.

NON-DIRECTIVE WAYS OF MENTORING: (p.23):
Three Situations:
1. Writing for the Daily Titan at CSUF, there was one younger reporter that I helped, mostly just dealing with the raging egos of our 20-year-old editors.
2. Junior and Senior years at Mission Viejo High School and Freshman year at LMU, I worked with the archdioses of Orange and LA on weekend retreat programs at Wrightwood and later on day-retreat programs.
3. Teaching at Furgeson Elementary, having worked outside of education in technology I brought a different point of view to my students. The standard was what is it that succeeds outside of Hawaiian Gardens?

Positive Attitude: Listening, communicating expectations and leaving room for the human experience of learning through “trial and error” (learning what works by risking what doesn’t work).

Helping Others: Expressing the belief that my job as a teacher is to move them forward toward success, not about throwing them into little “sorting” grade buckets.

Comfort at Listening/Neutral context: Because of my background in music and performing and journalism, my first role as a communicator is to listen. To me, it means something to me if someone feels comfortable enough with me to share their concerns and problems. I have had success with more than a few “problem” parents/grandparents because I first set about to listen to them before telling them anything.

MENTORING STYLES (p25):
Discussion/thoughtful/what works/examples: I think that I’m more comfortable with the verbal/reflective modes of mentoring than the ones that require staging and drama. I have been known to use music and visual images but that’s more an expression of myself and my need to communicate than what I would call teaching or mentoring. .

Type of mentee: Number one, someone open to learn. Of course, I’m not sure what the point would be of having a mentee resistent to learning, or one who thinks that they’ve already “arrived,” though I can imagine that that does happen. One with the eagerness to communicate would be good.

Type of mentor: Coach, Spotter, leading from the side of the stage. I see my own time “on stage” as being something very different from being a mentor or teacher (with its own value and reward).

IKA’S CASE (p.27)
Risks: Would your family understand your interest in helping this person out. How bad would things get for you if you recommend Ika and it doesn’t work out.
What’s the Plan? What does he need to succeed? What support can you connect him with (including, but besides yourself) to help him with the areas he’s not fully up-to-speed on? Is he open to being “sponsored” and able to accept help?
Serious: How long term is this and how much time in the here and now? Isn’t an investment of time in Ika an investment in the future of the company? How do you measure that?
Change: How much time would this require? You might consider including or inviting Ika to participate in working with the softball team if you feel like he might need time away from his old environment. If the goal is to support him and your activities are “real” in your life than sharing these parts of your life shouldn’t be overly invasive.
Ika African-American: Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be any problem with this senario, though the questions might come about whether he’s “worth the effort” or his “trustworthiness.”
Your African American: Sadly, this might be a problem depending on Ika’s upbringing and your family.

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