Leadership Learning Plan

Yesterday, I had another discussion about the economy with the headmaster of Waring. He is a mentor of mine and good friend of my mother's. I attended Waring from 1993-1997. My mom remained as the note-taker for the Executive Committee, as it was called then, years after I graduated college.

Peter explained the hiring status of independent schools--due to the economy--and told me he would let his fellow North Shore school heads know that I was looking. I thanked him and went home to search aisne.org for more job listings.

I search this site regularly, each time with a new set of eyes trying to find an appropriate job listing. What disturbs me most is that the number of years of previous experience required has jumped from 1 to 3, specifically at the high school level, in the past months. As Peter said, "Its a buyers market" so they can ask for whatever they want. Since I am trying to sell myself, I am out of luck without any years experience as a lead teacher of high school.

When I searched the site yesterday, I was thinking about tonight's meeting with Melanie about my leadership learning plan. How am I possibly going to get the experience I need to get a job and get a job in the next 5 years? Ugh. Stimulus package, where are you? Lightbulb!! Some independent schools offer formal mentorship programs, including one very well known school: Phillips Academy.

So far away? Not really. I live on i93, perhaps this is the reason. It is so far away for the mother of a one-year old and four-year old in a M.A. program. It is not for the graduate of said M.A. program with a two-year old and a five-year old (kindergarten!!). I e-mailed the administrator of the program this morning and she was quite positive and suggested if I were interested in 2011-12 that I apply in the fall and that they would know what they needed by November 2010.

Message from yesterday and the leadership learning plan: slow down. Hmm. Aren't we supposed to be being proactive? An interesting lesson. Sometimes being proactive is about slowing down.

Identity or Job?

When I graduated from college, I wore a green ribbon pinned to my gown with a small gold safety pin. It signified a promise my fellow "Marine Science Club" members and I had made to consider the environment before taking any job. What it meant to me at the time was that I should not be involved directly in environmental degradation or military defense work. In reality, I was looking more for an identity than a job, having just quit my Borders gig after getting into graduate school. Being in my early twenties, I believed that I was destined for a professorship, running a research lab, and teaching college students about Biology. A job. In fact, I identified as a Biologist. My job was as a graduate student, teacher of college lab sections, and mentor to 1-3 undergrads per semester in the laboratory. When I graduated from grad school I was six-months into a postdoctoral research position, my first "real" Biology job.

Or was it?

A post-doctoral position has the same student-adviser relationship plus benefits and masquerades as a job. Really it is an underpaid stint of research in which one is expected to publish and job hunt, for only a slightly less temporary employment. After years of being mentally invested in my "job", because it really was my identity, I was tired of not being taken seriously.

So I left and am now in the process of redefining my work-life balance. I want to be a high school science teacher at a private school, a place where I can be involved in curriculum development and scientific literacy training.

So here is the question. Am I going to be sad when next fall comes around and I still don't have a job? By the way, only teachers with multiple years experience at the high school level are being hired right now. I have a great deal invested in my volunteer work - community science curriculum development for the Fells Reservation (Medford, MA) - but can that be enough? Am I going to feel unemployed? Can I figure out a way for the volunteering I do to take the place of employment until I find my teaching job?

One barrier to this is that people that work in volunteer situations often don't have the same level of professionalism (personal boundaries) that employees in larger organizations have. Solutions? Demand it. More on that next post.

My mindful practice.

I resolve to stop doing things, "just because," but only right after I post a picture of this yummy-looking strawberry.

Over the weekend, I participated in my first in-person leadership course. Notably, I didn't talk as much as I normally do in class. Actually, I talked much less than I normally do ... and it felt good. I didn't dominate the conversation; I didn't try to steer the conversation in another direction; I actively listened and participated when moved to do so. Unfortunately, my movement towards less oral participation went too far the other way and I ended up confusing my classmates who, having met me in August 2009, were surprised at my relative silence and concerned for my well-being. This, of course, was not intended.

I need to find a better balance between throwing myself in full-force to professional conversations and being a wall-flower. However, I think I have made at least a few steps in the right direction towards not speaking out of turn or feeling the need to create more turns than others.

I should be knitting. Right now.

I brought knitting to my high school. When I visit now, twelve years or so after graduating, girls are still knitting in all-school meeting ... having no idea where/how/who brought them "knitting elective".

What's the point? I don't mean to be funny.

What is the purpose of knitting? Machine-knitting is in my everyday life. Much of my clothing is knit, not woven. Why would anyone take the time to knit something from scratch, by hand? These days you can easily buy a synthetic--or wool--equivalent for cheaper than the crafting materials. The answer is simply PROCESS.

The act of creating cloth from sequential knots and loops in the exact color you want, is nothing short of miraculously therapeutic. Each row--or half-row--is a journey and is full of teachable moments. Collectively, those moments may make a hat, a scarf, a dainty child's jacket in green, a chunky aran for next winter, a pair of pants your child might refuse to wear; but, in reality they are bringing bytes of zen to your head through every nerve ending in your hands. Knitting reminds me that I need to be proactive about my learning process and all the relationships I have. Conflict is frightening, but, if dealt with calmly--much like a dropped stitch--it can bring bountiful rewards, well beyond simply avoiding having to frog the whole project (i.e. pull out and start over: for those of you who aren't knitting lingo savvy).

As I said, I should be knitting. Right now.

thoughts on "the transformative power of practice": pt. 1

All of our ages were once counted in months. Looking back on a photograph of myself at 20+ months, or my children before their first birthdays, I am reminded that in some ways, we are the same people, and, in others, everything has (or will have) changed.

Ng'ethe Maina and Staci Haines explain, in their article entitled 'The Transformative Power of Practice', that our present behaviors are based in part on the gut reactions of ourselves and others during our upbringing and younger life. These default practices are inherited, according to Maina and Haines.

A short list of my de-faults:

1. fidgeting in meetings;

2. not having sufficient eye-contact;

3. taking excessive responsibility to placate a person who is annoyed, rather than engaging in conflict (i.e. "I'm sorry" n=infinity);

4. feeling dumb;

5. letting my insecurities interrupt my ability to be orally eloquent;

6. not giving people enough credit for their ability to act responsibly (translation = letting people get away with negative behavior OR not giving them the psychic space to figure out a mutually positive relationship with me);

7. working harder--emotionally--at professional relationships than need be and not hard enough on personal relationships; and

8. not giving myself enough credit for successes and too much credit for failures.

Despite all this negativity, Maina and Haines are incredibly inspiring. They state, "... because our default practices have often been shaped out of difficult experiences when we had limited means of dealing with and processing them, these practices often don't align with out present-day values, politics, and/or what we care most about ... The good news is that we can learn to observe our default practices, instead of reacting immediately. We can learn other ways to take care of what they were taking care of - other ways to deal with conflict, power, our own and others emotions and need for safety." Their definition of intentional practices as "as those we choose to do in order to transform the way we show up in the world" makes me overwhelmingly confident (and admittedly scared of failure) that I can gain the confidence I need to not only appear like I "have my sh*t together" but feel like it too. At the core of it, I need to be more centered if I am to make it as a "self"/"community"-made environmental leader.

Amazing! Looking at three pictures of happy babes (Bronwyn, Charlie, and myself), I would never guess that one could be so confused. Ha! that is because only one has turned 30.

The naming of a blog

I added another unwelcome skill to my hat on 01.30.10, the ability to speak at a memorial service without blubbering. Days later, I named this blog.

I was searching first for a name that wasn't taken: aren't we all? I am sure everyone of you--or at least most--have had the unfortunate experience of trying to come up with a simple e-mail user name (your own) only to find that you are the second or perhaps fifth person to request the name. "How could there be another me?", you thought before trying to come up with a quirky, creative, your-friends-will-chuckle-at-and-your-colleagues-will-respect username to describe and differentiate yourself from the masses, all in 4-10 characters. Here is my story of a journey to this blog's name, 'contemplative imagination.'

First, I usually come up with titles after I have decided on content. Create a blog about leadership: Am I a leader? If I am studying to become a leader, maybe I am really just reorienting my thinking around my recently reoriented professional goals? What does being a leader mean at home? In my community? As a volunteer? A teacher? In truth, my subtitle came first, 'thoughts on leading from the sidelines.' I am a good listener, or at least I try to be when I am not moved to talk more than my share. I am the woman on the side of the cocktail party, talking deeply with one or two people, having my solitary glass of wine. I'd rather work closely with a limited number of people--or within a limited administrative structure--I have a "too many cooks" philosophy. I am shy and would rather not be the center of attention. Hence the subtitle.

Second, I think projects and relationships work better if they are thought out well. I spend a great deal of time talking through ideas and day-dreaming and talking to myself in the car, the shower, at the grocery store, changing diapers. Contemplation is key in my daily life. I don't meditate. I don't go to church, but I do listen to the Unitarian Universalist broadcast from downtown Boston any Sunday that I am available to do so. Philosophy is comforting to me. Despite being a trained scientist, I even have a degree with the word in the title. Philosophy is central to science, even though many people think of it as a numbers, data, and statement game. I believe philosophy helps make the jump from numbers to reality and reminds people of their humanity in the face of their chosen profession. It certainly helps me focus on human connections. Contemplative became my blog's perfect descriptor.

Third, Margaret's memorial service kept coming back into my mind. She was my teacher for over 2 years during a trip my family took that required home-schooling. For years afterwards, she taught me writing/art/life skills as my mother recovered from my father's death in 1989. Ironically, Margaret's--and my father's--memorial service were held in the same Unitarian Church in Gloucester, MA. From my remembrance of her, below, came imagination.

"On imagination

The mice use banana leaves to float down the water trailing off Mt. Vaea, Samoa. They are unaware of us, climbing up to see Robert Louis Stevenson’s grave, or how difficult it is to hike in jelly shoes or sandals when you have just spent weeks barefoot on the deck and in the aft salon of a schooner. The mice are on their way down; we are on our way up.

Margaret and I, we have imagination.

It is important to record our observations; after all, no one else has been here in years, maybe ever. I offer to be the scribe and Margaret will make sure our shelter, should we be marooned here on this deserted island – again in the South Pacific – that we won’t get rained on. Of course our shipmates will want to hear all about the coconut crabs, the cowry shells, and rare plants we see. I better draw some, just in case my notes prove incomplete.

Margaret and I, we are on leg 531 of our adventure across the world.

Back on Rambler, Margaret and I are sitting in the main salon knitting a sleeping bag for Growsly. King Growsly is getting a bit cold and will need of something to use on his next camping trip with his queen. The aft salon of Rambler is a perfect place for us to learn math, French, writing, and all about maps with MW, not to mention a great camping ground for bears, a lion named George, and a Figment who works as their guide and porter.

Our imagination can topple personal mountains; its ability to make friends – old, new, partially invisible – is trumped by one quality only, a strange quality. It serves as a homing beacon, a magnet of sorts, for finding the best icecream shops, no matter how unfamiliar you are with your port of call. How else can you explain us finding homemade waffle cone sundaes, with real cream, in Auckland, New Zealand, in a street kiosk!

I believe we are here today in celebratory remembrance of imagination."

A Start ...

This is a picture of agarose, DNA, and ethidium bromide, a carcinogen. It is taken on an ultraviolet light box, an innocuous piece of equipment that can give you a sunburn if used incorrectly. Most of the DNA products are the size I am looking for, although they should be cleaned, perhaps diluted, and I'm going to toss out samples 5-8 because I think they are contaminated.

Molecular Biology, I do not miss you.

This picture is also a representation of leading from the sidelines. As a biology graduate student, and then postdoc researcher, I felt responsible for myself, undergraduates, and other graduate students. I am not sure I envisioned myself as having leadership skills, but I did want to make sure that my co-workers were able to understand our boss - whom I had worked for years longer - and not get discouraged by his erratic behavior. I found myself listening carefully to their interactions with him and 'translating'.

I would talk through with them their meeting, or concern, and help them come up with a reasonable plan that, hopefully, did not have them working another weekend or feeling bad that they couldn't. We'd come up with strategies for their writing, something else that, if not done 'properly', would cause grief beyond measure in the form of micro-editing far past reason. I discovered the hard way that too much micro-editing can cause the loss of critical content ... especially in methods sections.

Did I take on this role out of seniority? Maybe. Perhaps not.