Growth through discomfort

I have really been pushed outside of my comfort zone this spring semester, and although there were moments of anxiety and tears, I truly enjoyed these learning experiences. 5304 guided me through strategies of making organizational change, and I was forced to take myself out of my 4 classroom walls to create a strategy to influence my peers and administration. 5317 led me through a process of writing and submitting an article for publication as well as creating my first podcast. That was the really unnerving one. No retakes?? No edits?? But I really enjoyed making a podcast once we were actually doing it, and the strategies I learned about influencing behavior are already being implemented in my personal and professional life. This semester, I continued to work with Christopher Aebig, Eboni Mitchell and Claudia Rios. I also reached out to Melanie Martinez in 5317, and we ended up co-authoring the publication article as well as collaborating on the podcast.

ELDL 5304 Leading Organizational Change felt completely overwhelming at first. There were 3 books on the reading list and our first assignment was due at the end of the first week! I read Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change and The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals before the first week of school, and that was helpful in easing the workload, but I need to highlight more while I read to make it easier to reference important parts later on. I really enjoy watching all the assigned videos and applying what I learned to my life and innovation plan, but I still find discussion posts to be my least favorite part of every class. I find it difficult to establish any kind of relationship through the discussions, even when I try to comment on people’s posts who I have talked to in breakout rooms during the class zoom. I have learned a lot from reading other students’ posts, and I need to focus on learning new perspectives for discussion posts instead of building relationships.

ELDL 5317 Resources Digital Environments started off much differently. I felt strong starting off with my publication outline, but then had a moment when I realized it was strongly encouraged to work with a partner. It was a bit late in the game to find a partner, but thankfully, I was able to connect with Melanie, a fellow secondary social studies teacher. She had incredible ideas throughout the whole process, and I really enjoyed working with her and learning how she is implementing blended learning. I sometimes struggle with reaching out to new people, but this experience of working with Melanie has encouraged me to continue reaching out because that person might be someone who I really connect with. The peer review process for the publication article was a new experience, and it led to some very helpful feed forward which helped us create an even better article. Google docs felt like a seamless method of commenting and editing papers, and I will be certain to use that with my own class. The podcast was definitely the most intimidating part of this class, and since I invited my expert, New Mexico Teacher of the Year sister-in-law to join our podcast, I was also the host. I was nervous that I would stumble around my words with no retakes, but my team of Chris, Melanie and Eboni were all such great partners who came prepared with interesting and insightful stories, that I was able to settle my nerves and truly enjoy what everyone was discussing.

One of the best moments of this semester was reaching out to Dr. Grogan for clarification and help on the Influencer Strategy assignment. I turned in a draft and received a lot of feedforward comments. My fixed mindset reacted first by freaking out a bit over the edits I clearly needed to make, but then I consciously forced my growth mindset to take over. I emailed Dr. Grogan to set up a meeting, and she emailed back immediately at 11:30 pm to see if I was available at that moment. Dr. Grogan was incredibly kind and patient while walking me through her feed forward and answering all of my questions, and I came out with such a deeper understanding of what I needed to do. I was so appreciative of the time she took not only with the meeting we had, but also with her feed forward on our assignments and the time she spent planning activities during our zoom meetings. I am recognizing throughout this program that a teacher’s time is one of the most valuable resources, and sharing it with students in the form of feed forward and interactions has a huge influence over a student’s success.