TL Under Construction

OK, I confess. When I was a uni student in the 1980’s I used to race home from my final lecture (just like the rest of the dorm students) to catch the “Days of Our Lives”. My lasting impressions are: the drapes always seemed to be drawn in the houses and the Lawry organ music  gave it a silent movie atmosphere.  But there was one very important lesson in all the soapy episodes if you were paying attention. It had to do with communication. Most of the problems the characters found themselves in had to do with NOT saying something rather than what they did say.

If only Rachel had told John that she was pregnant ..

If only Thorn said he had seen Ashley being comforted by Dallas (and jumped to a terrible conclusion) …

Anyways you get the drift. Not being open and honest can lead to drama but not to good teams or to good decisions. And I am very interested in having good decisions made.

I am preparing to facilitate a decision-making working party at school. It is my first time facilitating at school and the Situation-that-needs-attention (SITNA) is complex. I gave a presentation to the working group a fortnight ago about the 6 Step Core Decision Making Model as outlined by Harvey, Bearley and Corkrum in The Practical Decision-Maker. (This model was part of our course studies). The group has agreed to working through this model. In the first step, Mind-Set, the group is asked to address the circumstances and state of the situation. Getting the context right is my priority at this first meeting. The The Practical Decision-Maker authors state:

Often, you must deal with concerns about conflict, openness, trust, and communication as part of establishing a mind-set that is supportive of problem solving. (Harvey, Bearley and Corkrum, 2001, 21)

And I know this will be true so I am re-readng everything I own about effective communication and conflict management.

The soaps provided a good lesson about honest communication, other communication/conflict resolution gems I’ve revisited are from (a great book with an unfortunate title) Dealing with People You Can’t Stand: How to Bring out the Best in People at Their Worst –

• Poor communication/negative remarks often have positive intent – look for the underlying good purpose that was meant and acknowledge it ( don’t know what it is? make one up – communicator will either agree or make their good intent clear) Egs. want to get something done right, want acknowledgement for something done, want support.
• State your own positive intent. Tell people why you are telling them something before telling them. Directs more positive attention to your message.
• Whenever a discussion starts to degenerate into conflict, try to ascertain the reasons why people are for or against something.

I read on …

___________________________________________

Brinkman, R. and Kirschner, Rick. (1994). Dealing with people you can’t stand: How to bring out the best in people at their worst. McGraw Hill: New York.

Harvey, TR, Bearley, Wl & Corkrum, SM. (2001) “Core steps in decision making”, in The practical decision maker: A handbook for decision making and problem solving in organizations, The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, MD and London, pp. 17-34.

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All the recent discussion on the OZTL_NET list (for information professionals) about the political climate and future of TLs in various states in Australia can put a real scare in the hearts of those of us studying to become TLs. I think the hardest thing for us is to envisage how we will fit in in the future. We are gaining skills but don’t know what our professional landscape will look like.

How wonderful to find places that if not exactly ‘maps’ are at least ‘tourist brochures’ with a few snapshots of what we might expect to be doing and dealing with.

One of the best places I’ve found is asseslindoiron wiki
entitled New Literacies, New Libraries, New Learners: Information and Ideas on School Libraries 2.0 – they have videos, slide presentations and academic papers that are exciting, challenging and comforting

There is a big future out there for TLs – I’m beginning to see it more clearly and am as excited as ever to be a part of it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sergei24/1645592932/

Things relevant to my study have a lovely way of hopping onto the path in front of me and today was no exception. The Age on Thursday (and I skimmed on Sat) ran an article entitled “Eight signs your workplace is crook” by James Adonis. One of the eight signs had to do with communication so my TL caterpillar antenna went up (metaphorically speaking).

The statement that caught my attention the most was Adonis’s statement:

People falsely believe that email is communication. It’s not. Email is just a means of transferring information. It’s certainly not communication.

I have been coming to this conclusion myself, both as a TL at work and as a member of a team collaborating on an assignment for one of my subjects. Here’s my take on why emails are not communication.

Communication is meant to be two way. Emails get written and sent but that doesn’t mean they are received or read or responded to or that the content is understood.

Having a conversation via email even when the other party responds has complications. Like letter writing in days of old, it is hard to express the feeling, the weight or the intent of things you are trying to say. Even with the extensive use of emoticons (which can end up looking rather juvenile) nothing written can truly convey meaning like tone of voice, pauses, immediate clarification and feedback and the chance to hear the other person do the same.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/annabelb/533160375/

Chapter Three of Barell’s book, asks the reader to pause and ponder –

My responses are below but I’d love to hear others thoughts and suggestions.

How do you go about creating a culture within a classroom, and within a school, that fosters inquiry?

• listen to questions – use active listening techniques
• encourage students to listen to each other’s questions and responses and to ask each other questions before they ask the teacher. I want them to view each other as possible human resources not just adults.
• set expectations that no questions are to be rubbished as ‘dumb questions’.
• invite thoughtfulness – stop and think or write/think, envision

What have you done to enable students to feel comfortable posing questions?

I’m not in a classroom, I’m in the library and I feel that libraries are the ultimate classroom of inquiry So I :

• try to be to be curious myself. If a child talks to me about a topic (eg. sharks lose 200 teeth each year) I like to say “I wonder why that is? I wonder how …. I guess I wonder out loud a lot
• admit I don’t know things and then wonder out loud where the best place might be to look (in fact I often ‘don’t know’ even when I do know). I want to encourage them to think about the resources and which might be most useful for the question at hand.
• encourage them to report back and fill me in on anything I don’t know about that they find the answer to — then I can give them some positive feedback about their search efforts.
• began to place non-fiction books in the picture book display racks. Little kids can get a lot out of the pictures even if they can’t read the words and these are popular item for prep boys to take out. They would never go looking on the stacks for them at first. Now they will come in and ask if we have more on trucks, motorbikes, dinosaurs, volcanoes, tornadoes …. they venture into the non-fiction a lot more now.
• purchase and leave out odd facts books like Guiness World Book of Records, Ripley’s Believe it or Not, Wacky but True magazines etc.
• teach them how to use the catalogue to search for resources as young as possible.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/shutterarts/2549184786/

The second chapter of Barell’s text, Developing Curious Minds, examines how to cultivate inquisitiveness. He suggests that there are ‘dispositions that are related to inquisitiveness’ (Barell, 2003, p22) and that wonder, speculation and curiousity provide their foundations too. They are:

• an openness to mystery and novelty
• a willingness to take risks and make mistakes
• collaboration with others
• doubt/ healthy skepticism

He suggests that as educators working with children, we also want to cultivate:

• the confidence to speak up when it’s appropriate
• persistence in investigations – don’t give up quickly
• becoming observant
• the ability to reflect on what we know and do not know

He then asks the reader to think of other attitudes and skills that might be correlated with an inquisitive mind.

My response:

• willingness to look at something from different points of view/angles
• true brainstorming skills
• willingness to bounce ideas around with others/understanding that collective curiousity builds individual curiousity
• playfulness — a certain lighthearted attitude to wondering

I’m sure there must be more?