I posted this reflection to my practicum group and I felt that it would be well served in this forum as well. The group was given several topics to reflect in regards to our work. The one that stuck with me then and still does now is the one centering around practicum being about transformation. Recently I have been spending a lot of time thinking about my three year journey to graduation. The concept of transformation is one that has often come up in my thoughts. I like to think of myself as being very different, yet the same. I think too that I have seen the changes that many of us have seen through the journey at Antioch or another institute of higher learning. From the obvious professional and personal growth to having to overcome personal losses along the way, the transformation has never been easy. Yet at the same time I consider it to be equally rewarding. When I focus the lens onto my practicum I can see a much clearer picture of the transformation.
When I began tossing around my practicum last March I was committed to the idea that I was going to earn the education part of my masters in education. I was going to learn every academic piece of being the principal of a progressive school and so I set out on my journey with a goal of achieving 600 meaningful practicum hours. Like a lumberjack clear cutting a forest, I spent the better part of 6 months doing exactly that. I read, I tried, I learned, I loved (in terms of my work) and that is what I did. I came into this term and expected to do the same thing. I knew there was less pressure on me in that most of my work was in process and ready to pick up. However the pick up part did not go as expected and suddenly while I was down picking up my projects to restart them I started to see things very differently.
It all started the second week of January, where instead of normal Saturday routine at Antioch in the library doing work, I went to Home Depot instead. I spent a good chunk of the day just walking around the lumber area looking at wood and for ideas on how to do the finishing work in my basement. My Dad and I had done about 85% of the project going on four years ago. He passed away from cancer in January 2007 and perspective on life changed. I was never sure why I had not picked up this project in the past 4 years, but for some reason I never did. Maybe I was waiting for my Dad to come help me, and maybe this was the moment where I finally realized that I would have to do it without his help. I spent the following week doing the finishing work and what I was able to complete did not look half bad. To this point I had done little to no work on my practicum since mid-December. While I knew I needed to get going, I just found that I was not truly motivated to do it. After spending the January long weekend doing manual labor in my basement, I sat down and took a good look at my contract and wondered aloud why I had felt less than enthusiastic about it. I asked a lot of the people in my life for the reasons behind my lack of motivation. I even wondered privately how little work I could do and still pass just based on my “lumberjack” approach of the last two terms. I knew this was not going to work for me, so I just got started. I started with what I thought was my easiest project. That is project # 1 for me. Project # 1 is setup for me to work on my future self. This is a very different approach for the self-confessed lumberjack of knowledge. As I got into the project more I was starting to see myself differently, I think I was starting to transform.
I joked casually about this transformation I felt I was undergoing at my group’s meeting in February. After all I had just spent barely a couple weeks on this project and the fruit had yet appear. I even would have offered that night that I really did not care much about the fruit of my labor. That it was much more about the idea of offering to share knowledge. I think this was the jumping off point for me. In my work I have done little and cared less about collaborative web technologies. I simply saw them as a complete waste of time, as things for people to tell me there opinions about things I do not care about, or to discuss matters I would not even discuss with my wife. One morning, while running on my treadmill, I was catching up on some of my podcasts. I ended up listening the Practical Principal’s podcast on Twitter. They went on and on about it and kept wondering about why someone would do this especially for the reasons I detailed a couple minutes ago. I had noticed on several blogs that people were openly advertising the Twitter user names and yet I still could not figure out why. So I decided to give it a try. The first people I decided to follow were the people on the podcast I listened to. I also found a couple other people to follow. So much like a stalker, I spent a week just watching people talk. As I spent more time watching their conversations I started to see the value in it. They were people talking about education, not porn or Battlestar Galactica. So I added more people to my following list, then these people started following me. When they are following you, you are the conversation, and when I have something to say or a question to ask they can answer it. In media the term convergence often is mentioned and this is what happened to me. As I had noticed people Twitter links on their blogs, so I took a look at how to do it for mine. I found a plugin to do it, but also to push out notices to the people I am following that my blog has been updated. At this moment the convergence started to happen, instead of me being the only person to appear in the blog stats I now seen people from all over reading it. At this point I have readers in 16 states and 5 countries, including countries I have never heard of (Moldova – between Romania and the Ukraine (who knew?)). I thought 50 hits per month would be really good in December, but it seems I am going to achieve that by the end of February. The convergence piece was not only people reading it, but also people offering comments on my posts. When I started I really did not care about this, but now just having people offer their opinions on my thoughts is quite gratifying. I have begun to be transformed.
Through my work in project 1, I started to see how my other projects were no longer clear cutting the forest or simple checkmarks. They were now projects that were preparing me for the next step on my journey in life. Combined with my newly developed personal learning network, I suddenly see growth occurring beyond graduation. I think the biggest piece of information I have learned about what separates a good principal from a another one is the ability to adapt and transform ahead of the curve. Simply put the lumberjack approach will not work as one needs to be able to cut the tree down, but plant the proper tree in its place. Putting the new tree back was the piece I was missing coming into this term, but through my own transformation I think I can see how to do it. If I can’t do that, I now have an international learning network and a place to ask for help.
Interestingly through all of this talk of transformation when I was speaking with my advisor a couple weeks ago, I ended the call by asking when I am I finished. I asked the question not as a question of what the current check box of being finished is, but as a question of seeing this transformation having occurred. You see I am ready to finish this process, not because I can, but because I can see the next steps and the walkway that is going to take me there. I want to take that walk, but I need to let go from this process and structure in order to fully immerse myself there.
