Todd Whitaker
Hvað gera frábærir kennarar öðruvísi?
Í þessum fyrirlestri, sem byggður er á samnefndri bók hans, segir Todd okkur frá eiginleikum og starfsháttum frábærra kennara og hvað þeir gera öðruvísi. Hann talar um mikilvægi jákvæðni, að hrósa á réttan hátt og hvernig okkar viðhorf hefur áhrif á alla í kringum okkur. Það er gaman að hlusta á hann og ekki bara fyrir kennara heldur skólastjórnendur, stuðningsfulltrúa, skólaliða og allt starfsfólk. Ég er viss um að þetta fær þig til að ígrunda hvað frábært starfsfólk í skóla gerir öðruvísi og kveikir vonandi umræðu ykkar á milli.
“Great teachers have high expectations for their students but even higher expectations for themselves.“
— Todd Whitaker
Spurningar og svör frá Sli.Do
Q1: How do you recommend one should confront coworkers on their negativtity?
This is a common and complicated question. My initial response is that it is not a coworker's job to deal with their peers. That is a leader's job. If a coworker stands up to a peer who is a bully that person will just bully someone else. If the leader stands up to a bully they will not bully anyone else in the school.
Do you expect your own children to fix their friends? Probably not. However, you likely expect your own children to do what is right even if their friends do wrong. That is the standard teachers should have. If a coworker(s) is doing wrong, your responsibility is to do what is right and it is the leader’s responsibility to deal with them so it will stop being a drain on the school. Negative people can suck the life out of everyone, that is the job of the leader. My first book was Dealing With Difficult Teachers simply because that is the most difficult thing for a principal to do correctly. I have never written a book called Dealing With Difficult Peers because that is not a fair thing to expect a teacher to do.
Q2: How do we as an educational community reach the negative staff members and convince them to join the positive side?
My first response to this is to work on making sure the negative side does not increase in numbers. What are we doing to make sure that the new teacher does not join the negative group? The negative group is always recruiting. Always. The positive, caring staff members should first make sure that their group is increasing and thus isolating negativity. It is very difficult for negativity to survive without colleagues.
The next thing is to try to reduce the negative group one person at a time. Rather than working on influencing the leader, often it is best to work on negative followers. Asking them to join a project, sit by them at lunch, informally connect after school. If there are no negative followers there is no such thing as a negative leader.
Negative followers are the weakest people in a school and influencing them is usually much easier than moving the cynic in a positive direction. Another crucial element is for leadership to value and reinforce all of the positive contributors in a school. Make people feel important - because they are important. Work to reinforce the positive efforts so others want to feel that way as well. I call it ‘Look for the good parts, even if you have to squint.”
Q3: How do you help colleagues in a constructive way to change the mindset of the negative and prevent others from getting on the bandwagon and instead seeing the positive things that are happening around us too?
I think this was addressed in the earlier questions, but one thing I would share that can have a lasting effect is teaching people how to be more effective. If you have colleagues that always have excuses like, “Kids now a days”, etc., usually that is because they lack skills in effective teaching, managing their classroom, etc. Finding ways to help teach people how to be better, rather than telling people to be better is a much more successful path to improvement.
And I truly believe in our core that we all want to be effective and respected teachers. Some of us just do not know how to accomplish that. Teach them. Then the negativity often dissipates. We often have to change people's behaviors before they will change their beliefs.
Hver er Todd Whitaker?
Dr. Todd Whitaker er prófessor í menntunarleiðtogi við háskólann í Missouri og prófessor emeritus við Indiana State University. Hann hefur rannsakað áhrifaríka kennara og skólastjóra, heldur fyrirlestra um allan heim og gefið út yfir 60 bækur.
