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2016 Georgetown Highland Games - myself and the Grand Celtic Pipe Band By the Right...Quick March This weekend marked the start of the competitive highland games circuit. As I stood there with the band I wondered what style of leadership would best describe our dynamics. The band world is full of individuals with different levels of involvement, emotion, skill and passion. It is also filled with politics, criticism and judgement by others. While on the field performing and competing we follow strict rules. "By the right" means that you take your cue for position and movement from the person on the right. That person is the Pipe Major. We look to the Pipe Major to tell us when to start, where to walk and how to play during our set or medley. It is a commanding style of leadership due mainly to the military background of this hobby (Goleman, 2000). Do what I say, as I say and when I say it - without any negotiation. In a mass band situation with over 1000 people playing on the field there isn't much room for emergent leaders! Below is a recording of the Glengarry Highland Games mass bands version of Scotland the Brave. Drummers look to the Lead Drummer who takes his cues from the Pipe Major. When we are off the field and practising our music, the leadership style changes to a mixture of pacesetting and coaching. The change in leadership style "off the field" still comes at the direction of the band leaders, however, the way they work with the band changes. Shephard (2014), maker of bagpipes and an authority on band dynamics, shares information on the responsibility of the band members. Figure 1 shows the responsibility that different members have under this dynamic. Figure 1: Pipe Band Leadership Model: Management and Leaders [Shephard (2014)] During practice sessions we see highly motivated and skilled players challenged to maintain or improve through practise, drill work and group play. Those that struggle then benefit from coaching with players who have been asked to take a leadership role (e.g., lead drum, pipe sergeant) and they help with technique, setting up the instruments and providing tips for success. The goal during these sessions is to build a stronger, united team in both skill set and bond. The key becomes having those emergent leaders work with others on the common vision/goal (e.g., a well executed musical set). When this works well we are a band family who work and play hard together. Problems arise when the vision is not the same, or the leadership style drifts towards a more commanding style during non-competition times. In my daily life, as teacher, I play different leadership roles. In my hobby, however, I must remember trust in the vision and follow the leader. References Glengarry Highland Games (2015, August 2). Scotland the Brave [video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYcFIYpz7W4 Goleman, D (2010). Leadership that gets results. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from http://www.exeter.ac.uk/media/universityofexeter/careersandemployability/pdfs/resources/leadership.pdf. Shephard, B (2014) The Successful Pipe major. RTS Seminars. Retrieved from http://www.shepherd-bagpipes.com/pdf/RTS_Seminar_Thesuccessfulpm.pdf
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As our schools move forward with a vision of what the 21st-century classroom should be they are starting to realize that the leaders are really amongst the staff, students and community.
My students go to a small school with an open concept design (e.g., 1970's board initiative). It is one of the last schools left in the board with this design. The kindergarten rooms have their own doors and space, but the rest of the areas are sectioned off with dividers from the library space. I was surprised to read that this little school of no more than 150 students, that appeared physically to be stuck in a building from a board experiment, was putting this design to great use and bringing it into the modern era. They are creating a Makerspace in their library. The maker movement is about tinkering, exploring, inventing, learning and leading. Students work with simple materials to create and share something new, repurposed or re-envisioned. Makers become the experts, through trial and error, in real-world areas and share with others through moments fueled by "OH! How did you do that?" or "Can I try that?" Congrats to the forward thinking staff and community Thank you for being prepared to let the students take the lead and build skills essential for the 21st century. Hopefully my own children enhance their ability to create, collaborate, communicate and think critically. First problem to solve: where to store all their new creations? References Educause (2013). 7 Things You Should Know about Makerspaces. Retrieved from http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/eli7095.pdf Werrell, B. (2015). How Online Education Builds Career Readiness with the 4 Cs. Retrieved from http://www.connectionsacademy.com/blog/posts.aspx?BlogTagID=dc666b53-0f844098-b4eb-9be54c8b3d9d Students in the self-contained learning disability class often have a hard time being leaders. Asking these students to take a lead in a language based task seemed like a big step to take. In order to set them up for an experience that would allow them to feel like leaders we partnered with a K-5 school in our neighbourhood. In fact, some of the students went to this school. We had a plan to walk over every other week, read a book with 2-3 reading buddies, engage them in an activity and then play outside together. One of my grade 6 students, who has a decoding level of approximately grade 1, was adamant that he was not going to do it. Now what? The students in the classroom have become skilled at using laptops, Chromebooks and iPads to overcome some of their learning difficulties. Even though he could manage understanding text by using the iPad to read the content aloud to him, he refused to participate. Other students picked simple story books to read but this student wasn't going to budge. You see, this student not only has a learning disability, he also has a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder. The more I thought about how he has used technology to work with written material the more I thought the students in Grade 2 might also benefit from seeing this too. Here is how it played out: Reading Buddies Week 1 Teacher: "We are going to partner up with students in a Grade 2 class at the other school and read simple stories with them" Student A: "NO" Teacher: "We will work together to pick out a good book that is a good level and practise how to read to other people" Student A: "NO" Teacher (to Student A after others have gone off): "We can look at having the iPad read the text to them. The same thing you do in class all the time." Student A: "NO, I'm not coming to school that day." Teacher (to Student A): "Let's take a look at what is in iBooks" Student A: "NO" Teacher (begin to work through an interactive book called Find Me that had text and images to click on). Student looks over my shoulder from the Lego bin but won't participate. "I can't find the image to click on in this picture. Hmmmm" Student A: "It's there." (clicks on the image and sits down). Teacher: (fumbles to get the student's iPad to read and can't make it work) Student A: "Let me do it". From here the student goes through the rest of the book. During further practise sessions the student will not go through the rehearsal, but will answer my questions about the book. The best I hoped for was that he sat at the table with me for the actually Reading Buddies experience. He agreed that if I couldn't find one of the clickable images he would help me. Week 2: Reading Buddies Student A (yellow shirt) leads 3 students through an iBook We walk over with a wagon full of goodies to the other school and meet our reading buddies. The teacher has paired students up to join one older mentor. Student A is second in line and gets his three buddies. Teacher: "Just sit with them and get the iPad ready and I will be right over" Student: "OK" As I get the other 6 students settled with their buddies, I look over to see Student A not only reading the book, via the iPad app, but interacting with the students. He was asking them similar questions to what we had rehearsed in class. He kept track of who had had a turn already and let everyone have a chance to interact with the book. Teacher: "Are you OK here?" Student A: "I'm fine" Week 3: Reading Buddies revisited On the next visit to our reading buddies Student A had a second book loaded into iBooks that he was able to read with his two reading buddies. They listened to the story and then did some simple retell and comprehension work. Within 3 weeks this student went from a firm "NO" to a solid "I'm fine" to a position of no hesitation at all. Together the student quickly worked through Tuckman's stages of group development: forming, storming, norming and performing (in Bonebright, 2010). The group was formed for the student and then he had to come to grips with this role, figure out the expectations and then performing the task. He was a resistant, reluctant, hesitant leader, but he got there in the end. Children as Reader-Leaders Geeta Dharmarajan is a writer, educator and Executive Director of the non-profit Katha Organization. In her TedTalk, Geeta talks about starting a school in the slums of Delhi with a story-based learning philosophy. As a part of the program the students get their first computer and quickly learn more about how to work with it than their teachers. The students move into an emergent leadership role and show the adults what they could do with computer. Hunt and Crockett (1955) hypothesised that "emergent leaders will occur more often in groups where the official leader does not perform the leadership functions". The students in the Katha school invite the business men and women from the neighborhood into their classroom and teach them about fashion trends, new recipes and what is happening around the world. Geeta points out that while children initially need to learn to read for fun, they also needed to read for meaning. When we read for meaning we can develop as leaders in a given area. The students in the Katha classroom became leaders in various areas through use of the computer. Student A became an unexpected, emergent leader during this process. References
Bonebright, D. A. (2010). 40 years of storming: A historical review of Tuckman's model of small development. Human Resource Development International, 13(1), 111-120. Hunt, J. M., & Crockett, W. H. (1955). Emergent leadership in small, decision-making groups. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 51(3), 378-383 Dharmarajan, Geeta (2012). Children as Reader-Leaders: Geeta Dharmarajan at TEDxOxbridge. Retrieved June 01, 2016, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifsbycP4V-o |
AuthorI am a teacher in Halton and have spent 12 years dedicated to learning about and working with students who have special learning needs. I have been teaching since 2005. I have 4 kids (2 + 2 step), I play bagpipes, ride a motorcycle and love being outdoors. Archives
August 2017
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