CEd0565 Week Three

The Adaptive Leadership chapter of the How to Thrive as a Teacher Leader, by Gabriel has been the most interesting of the first four, so far. Particularly, pages 88 and 89, which are about teachers threatening to leave when not given what they would like. Gabriel says, “It is human nature to cling to the idea that the grass is always greener on the other side, which is why threats to transfer are so common.” [And] “Even if some things are better elsewhere, there are still problems that irk the faculty. No matter how strong the leadership or morale or test scores, there is no perfect school.” This is a book based upon realism. I like that. There’s a saying in the broadcast industry that goes, “Only the call letters change.” No matter what television station ones goes to, the same problems are there. Why? It’s because like education, every station and school have nearly the same conditions, pressures… reality. Even churches have their own problems. Which reminds me of the saying for church fellowships, “If you find a perfect church, don’t join it. You’ll wreck it.”

From the Who Moved My Cheese assignment, I said that I saw myself as both Sniff and Scurry since about 1988. In my case, I define Sniff as someone who is constantly checking out reality, what the trends are in the job market and other areas as well. Scurry, for me, is simply someone that makes mistakes here and there, like running into a wall occasionally.

Although I had my hands full during my associate's degree from 1977 to 1979, while working 38 hours a week, it was 1988 when I began to look for trends in the career field. In 88, I asked a manager how cable and satellite TV were impacting the advertising dollars. He said that they had has not hurt us very much. Even though he said this, I felt that "the hand writing was on the wall." Why? I noticed several directors and other staff members in the broadcast business that had purchased cable or satellite TV packages. I thought, "Boy... if they're buying from these competitors, it's not going to be long until those two areas really pick up. I don't care what the manager has told me; I'm going to begin training for something new." As part of my employer's improvement plan where employee's were reimbursed 50% of the their schooling costs for every C or better, I chose to take nine credits over the summer. At this point, I still wanted to stay in the business because I enjoyed it very much, but trying to complete my job responsibilities (with the nearly constant requirement to work many and varried hours), my wife and I decided it would be best to quit my full-time job with the station and enter UW-Milwaukee as a full-time student and work part-time doing something related to what I had been doing. So I "sniffed" around and decided that teaching high school looked like something I'd enjoy.
The "scurrying" part begins at this time because of major responsibilities at home, some from part-time work, and of course the new academic load. The sniffing and scurrying continues even after graduation and finding a teaching job at a local technical college, which included teaching job seeking skills to high school and adult students. The sniffing and scurrying parts are drilled into me over the next 6 years because I'm teaching the teenagers and adults to continually upgrade their skills to adapt to changing situations.
I've been trying to practice what I preach ever since my 1988 awakening. So far, I've been able to tie my skills from my associate's degree, my BA degree, and other training, to my present career situation. It means that I have been sniffing and scurrying for a long time now.
Incidentally, when I left the station in 1990, there were about 220 employees in the building; now there are 67.