I have been reflecting on the women who have held leadership positions around me while I have grown up and entered into a leadership position myself.\u00a0 These women have had a meaningful professional voice and one that I have valued for its shared wisdom, professionalism and authority.\u00a0 \u00a0 As a backdrop, Kim Campbell was Prime Minister of Canada as I was entering my final year of high school and while I have no idea what the political issues were, I recall that there was a sense that having a female Prime Minister was exciting and positive for Canada.\u00a0 The education faculty at University had strong female professors who were inspiring.\u00a0 One of my practicum principals was female as was the principal where I was first hired. Both of these women were no nonsense, straightforward people both of whom I learned significant lessons from.\u00a0 As I continued into education I encountered female school leaders in many schools around me and I was encouraged, challenged and motivated by their voices as I developed professionally in education.<\/p>\n
In my workplace we have approximately 25 staff, 5 men and 20 women.\u00a0 Three of the men are teachers, one is a custodian and I am the fifth.\u00a0 The 20 female staff are lead teachers, administrative assistants, financial managers, learning support teachers, custodians and a librarian.\u00a0 Our School Board consists of 10 people, 4 women and 6 men.\u00a0 As I consider our school as a place where women belong and are given recognition, I feel that our culture is inclusive.\u00a0 I interviewed two of our female staff members, a teacher and an educational assistant this week.\u00a0 They feel that as women their voices are valued and respected and that there is opportunity to take leadership roles or pursue any opportunity within the school.\u00a0 To broaden our conversation around inclusivity, we discussed the culture of our employees.\u00a0 I was curious to know if they felt a divide between teaching staff and support staff.\u00a0 They both agreed that their voices are seen as those of a team and valued equally.\u00a0 This was good for me to hear as I specifically refer to all of our employees as staff and do not like to distinguish a hierarchy based on position.<\/p>\n
If inclusion (Nugent, Pollack and Travis, 2016) is an area where I should specifically be paying attention to anywhere, it is perhaps around age.\u00a0 Much of my staff is 40+ and there are occasionally light hearted comments made about the patterns of behaviour of younger staff members.\u00a0 While there is nothing of concern in this observation, it is good to be aware of from a perspective of inclusion.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Nugent, J. S., Pollack, A., & Travis, D. J. (2016).\u00a0The day-to-day experiences of workplace inclusion and exclusion.<\/em>\u00a0Retrieved November 2018, from https:\/\/www.catalyst.org\/system\/files\/the_day_to_day_experiences_of_workplace_inclusion_and_exclusion.pdf<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have been reflecting on the women who have held leadership positions around me while I have grown up and entered into a leadership position myself.\u00a0 These women have had a meaningful professional voice and one that I have valued for its shared wisdom, professionalism and authority.\u00a0 \u00a0 As a backdrop, Kim Campbell was Prime […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,37],"tags":[27],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ldrs500","category-unit8","tag-learning-activity-2","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/350"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/create.twu.ca\/principalmorrow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}