Changing Habits:
I feel as if the best way to interpret this habit is: make time for yourself so that you do not lose your mind. So many times we get caught up in work, school, family, and so many other obligations that we lose track of what we are doing to maintain our own mental and physical well-being. As someone that has always valued time for myself, I know when it is time to set aside some time to 'recharge.' The reason I have valued time set aside for myself is because of my own inherit personality which leans towards introversion. Because my current profession and previous jobs had me interacting with so many people at once, I would always feel drained at the end of the day and had to find ways of replenishing my energies. I would either invest time in my hobbies (which vary depending on my mood) or just spend time with my significant other. Recently though, I have been neglecting spending time with my family and my in-laws. I will be setting aside time (maybe one afternoon a week) to spend with each family. Even though we've been busy with school (as my wife is also in a master's program), I feel as though we need to at least set the time aside to be with both our families so that we can both maintain our saws sharpened. Teaching to others: For this habit, I feel that my wife would benefit the most from learning it. She enjoys her job and will bring work home at times. Hopefully, I can help show her the importance of not neglecting herself! Maybe I can also convince her to pick up a hobby, one that she will enjoy and help take relax her during times of stress. Changing Habits:
Being able to work as a cohesive group is always important as a leader as well as getting others to work as a group. For a science grant the I am currently in, we have been working in small teams to make lesson plans, teach those lessons, reflect, modify, and re-teach. We have been working in such a way where each one contributes to the overall success of the group. I know that I may not be as vocal as some of the others in my group, but that is okay. Instead, I make my contributions through actions while others through words. This is a part of synergizing as a team, everyone has different strengths and you must know how to exploit your own abilities for the betterment of the team. If my team needs me to vocal, I will be. If my team needs work to be done, I will contribute. I will try to voice my concerns more, especially when we are going off topic so that I can help focus my group, thus increasing productivity. Teaching Others: Working as team can be one of the more difficult tasks students can be assigned. This is especially true when students do not know their roles in the group. This school year I have been attempting to get my students to work together as a team, but so far I have not been as successful as I would like. This following week I will attempt to get the class to work in small teams. Each student within the group will have an assigned task and well be responsible for contributing towards the final product. This may take a few tries, but I will continue teaching my students the importance of synergizing and working as a team. Changing Habits:
So far, I think this is the one habit I have managed fairly well in throughout my life. As someone that likes to observe, learn, analyze and then act, this habit comes naturally to me. That doesn't mean there is no room for improvement. During my marriage preparation classes, one of the best pieces of advice that my wife and I received at the time was: to ensure that you understand another person's needs, have them explain what their needs/wants are and then explain back in your own words to see if you understood them. That advice applies to this habit in the sense that as leaders, we must always try to understand what others need and how to support them. We can do that through observation, listening, and actions. While that advice works great in a 1 on 1 setting, I have not tried it in a group setting. Should the opportunity present itself, I will try to use this technique of understanding in a group setting to see if it still remains as effective. Hopefully, I can understand the person and then act in a way that is much more thought out in order to help them or come to an agreement with them. Teaching Others: For this habit, I will be focusing on one particular student. This student has had some trouble with empathizing with others and tends to only act in fairly self-centered ways. Hopefully, after teaching the habit by showing the student ways to understand others and making sure that the other person was understood. I will have that student practice with a few others just to make sure that the student has some practice in starting to develop the habit. One aspect of this habit that I think I tend to follow is that I try to be cooperative and helpful to others because they are like that with me. Even though in my youth I was a lot more cynical and pessimistic, I have seen that many people do really want to cooperate and actually do positive things. There are of course those that do not, but by gathering more of those that tend to think positively and with a 'needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few' mindset, one can accomplish many things. Granted, one should not always just agree with others say, not a chance. Rather, one should always try and find common ground from which to build good rapport with others and to build a foundation on that so that cooperation is enjoyable rather than a chore.
For the following week I will attempt to find a more productive way of handling finances with my wife. While we have been doing well, I know that there is another way in which we can save more money for that summer vacation we would like to take. I will of course have to come up with a plan with which to present to her, and hopefully from there we can work something out. Teaching others: Recently some of my students have been unwilling or unable to complete their class work in a timely manner. I can of course keep them during recess to complete their assignment, but that takes away from my time and their time. Instead of having them stay and complete their work, I will try and work out a deal with the more chronic cases where they could get extra perks (extra recess time) if they complete their work on time without any extensions. Teaching them how it will be beneficial to both of us if they complete their assignments in a timely manner. Changing habits:
One thing that I have noticed about myself is that if there is no deadline, I find it difficult to motivate myself to complete a task that is not enjoyable. Yes, I procrastinate. There have been times when I feel like I should break out of that habit, but then I remember how much I enjoy the pressure of accomplishing something in a limited time frame. The larger the time frame, the less I accomplish. The smaller the time frame, the more I am able to accomplish. Ideally, I would plan on how to use my available time to complete the tasks that I need to accomplish. Then, I would prioritize which ones to complete first (the more important ones). Finally, I would set out to complete them. I will be working on managing my time better this next week and comparing how things are accomplished compared to other weeks. If I successfully complete what I set out to do, then I will try and maintain a system where I will constantly try to improve upon it. By changing my management of my time, I will hopefully be accomplishing more things in a much more timely manner. Teaching others: This is one thing I have disliked teaching others, for it not something that I actively practice. But, I will make the effort to model to my students the best way to accomplish this. This group of students will be different than the ones where I have focused on their behavior. For this group, I will work with the students that have trouble turning in homework on time (if at all) and those that do poorly on spelling tests. I will give them daily assignments that they will have to turn in everyday rather than a homework packet for the entire week. By breaking down the homework packet into little pieces they can work on daily, they should be able to complete it on a regular basis. Changing habits:
By knowing what you want to accomplish when you set out to do something, one knows what steps you should be taking. Board games are a great example of how to start with the end in mind. Knowing what needs to be accomplished, one starts preparing to accomplish that goal. Such a game of Risk: the goal is world domination, but accomplishing that goal is something one must plan out. Such is the life of a teacher. What we teach should not be a disjointed collection of lessons. Rather, there needs to be a goal, something that we want to accomplish. For this, we look at what we want our students to accomplish and backwards map our lessons. Breaking them down into steps of different skills that students must learn by the end of the unit. By doing this type of planning, we are better prepared and leading students in a clear direction. This week I am planned a writing assessment. I began with what I wanted students to accomplish and then with what skills and abilities I want students to know to be successful in the writing assessment. I am will continue the lessons this week and next, culminating in the final writing piece. This has helped me to better gauge where students are and how to better help those that are struggling. This is the type of leadership one should also exhibit. The leader has a clear goal or something that needs to be accomplished. Then s/he would plan out how to reach that goal, all the large steps, things that may go wrong, expenses, and many others. After planning the leader would present the plan to others, explain it, ask for input, and improve upon it. After that, would be the implementation phase. Teaching others: I will continue working with the same group of students and in the same manner, but this week I will work on teaching them how to set a goal and accomplishing that goal. Because they like concrete examples, I will be using their running as an example. I will have them set goals for the number of laps that they would think they can jog and have them work towards it. Then the following session we will talk about whether or not they reached that goal and what they can do to modify their goal or modify their plan knowing what they can accomplish and knowing that they will be continuously improving. Changing habits:
One terrible habit that I practice is: waiting to organize. I love having things organized, having things be in their place at all times and having them be neat. It may stem from childhood, not sure, but it is how I function. Despite this inherent desire to see the world organized, I myself tend to let things gets fairly disorganized before I spring into action and organize everything. But, because I have let things become so disorganized, I end up spending quite a bit of time organizing everything again. Sometimes resulting in hours spent trying to get everything in order. Instead of letting things get overly disorganized, I would like to be more proactive about daily organizing. I will be setting aside a few minutes each day (about 5-10 minutes per area) to organize things. From my classroom to my home office, I will focus for just a few minutes on organization. Hopefully this will result in fewer entire days spent cleaning and organizing. Also, things should look cleaner and neater for longer. Teaching to others: I will be attempting to teach this habit to a few of my students: the ones that blame others when they get in trouble for talking. Hopefully, by teaching them to be more proactive when doing independent work, they will cause less noise disturbances to others and be able to complete the work fully. I will pull aside the group of 4-5 students twice a week for 10 minutes to have a little discussion on the importance of doing things correctly. Such as when someone talks to you, you have a few options: ignore, move away, or tell an adult. All of those options do not include continuing the conversation! By providing them the options and having them practice with each other how to carry out proactive behaviors, they should slowly start changing their habits to more positive ones. |
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