Month: December 2017

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Light From Many Lamps, Part 9 or 10.

“The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith.” (Watson, 1951, P 311). Watson teaches us a valuable lesson on leadership by piecing together some important highlights  from the story of Franklin D. Roosevelt and his charismatic and transformational style of leadership.

Roosevelt inspires us to live with faith. He teaches us that no matter what we experience in our lives, we need to live with faith. “ He did not live to see his dreams of world unity and a strong peace structure realized. But he never lost faith that out of the agony of war a new and better world would be born. (Watson, 1951, P 312).

I believe that this relates to my own life. One component of effective leadership is leading by example. I believe that if I hope to inspire children to have faith, then I must have faith.

Sometimes, it is difficult to believe that complex situations will workout. If you have faith, usually they end up working out. As a teacher, I try to inspire my students on a daily basis.  This article is more about inspiring a nation and the world towards the common goal of peace.  In the classroom, I inspire my students to overcome any personal obstacles they are dealing with to help them become stronger and better individuals.  Amongst my colleagues, I try to inspire them towards being a stronger team that works together towards our common goal of inspiring and educating children, to help them to mature and experience success in their lives.

 

 

References:

 

Watson, L. E. (1988). Light from many lamps. New York: Simon & Schuster

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Response to Timothy DeHaan’s (nocontest) Leadership Story

This is my response to Timothy DeHaan’s post (nocontest), My Leadership Story

 

I enjoyed the approach that you took to this assignment, as well as the presentation of your podcast. Your presentation was truly a story and one that was appealing to the listener.

 

In your post, you made a comment that the ball was “just short of the line.” I believe that this is symbolic. Sometimes, I feel like I try to juggle so many things in my life that I feel burnt out. I try to be the perfect christian, daughter, sister, friend, colleague, girlfriend, student and roommate. It gets exhausting and I often feel like in some areas I do not meet my own expectations or I am “just short of the line.” It is an extremely difficult task to be able to balance all of the things that we strive to be good at in life. Sometimes we are our own worst critics and I believe that this needs to be included in our thoughts when trying to find a balance. I think that this struggle is a sign of a good leader. Instead of accepting that this is the way life is, or just letting life happen, we are trying to do our best to be the best we possibly can be when life happens.

 

Thanks for the reflection and the great story.

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Unit 10: Course Reflection

I have learned a lot of things from this course. First, I have learned how to navigate an online course and have learned to manage time and balance a full-time job as well as my first course towards my masters, which was a challenge for me. I find teaching to be a demanding job and found it difficult to be able to make time for both work and schoolwork.  Starting the course late also added to the challenge.

 

I have also learned many things about leadership. I have learned about several different styles of leadership. I have learned about what it takes to be an effective leader. The area in which I have gained the most knowledge, and which I am grateful for is that I have had the opportunity to deeply reflect on my own practice. Prior to this course, my reflection was more about how my lessons were going. I find now that I am coming home from work each day, reflecting on how I dealt with colleagues and students in and out of my classroom environment. I reflect on how I can be a more effective leader in our school.

 

Northouse provides great insight into leadership and all of its complexities. It answered many of my questions about leadership and gave great tools to assist me in determining what kind of leader I am. This led me to be even more self-reflective.

 

I have had the opportunity to learn about many leaders in the world, whom I did not previously know much about. Light from Many Lamps has provided me with many examples and scenarios of how leaders emerge. I am grateful for the opportunity to have read these 2 fascinating textbooks.

 

In conclusion, my favourite quote comes from one of my Light From Many Lamps Assignments. I didn’t use this quote in my assignment, however it is from a story I read. The story speaks to the business of society and discusses the importance of living in the moment of each day. “…live for the day and its allotted task-to do what lies clearly at hand” and let the future take care of itself.” (Watson, 1951, 215).

 

This quote is one that I will carry with me to serves as a reminder to myself.

 

References:

Watson, L. E. (1988). Light from many lamps. New York: Simon & Schuster

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Response to Simarjit’s Leadership Story.

This is my response to Simarjit’s Leadership Story.

https://create.twu.ca/icandothis/2017/11/30/my-leadership-story/

 

Thank you for sharing your story with us.

 

I can relate to your final comments about whether or not you should use the skills, knowledge and experience to continue doing what you’re doing or whether you should evolve and learn new skills, stay challenged to keep learning new things and progress in life. This is my reasoning behind taking this course. It would be very easy for me to live in my small town and to teach grade 4 for the next 30 years, however I want to continue to evolve and grow and share that growth of knowledge with others.

 

I would be interested to know what some of your achievements and successes are so that I can have a deeper understanding of your leadership story.