All posts by gw141mackayclaire@glow
MLLC Module 2 – Emotional intelligence: Development of emotional intelligence
My EQ Action Plan
MLLC – Module 2 Emotional intelligence: Self-evaluation of emotional intelligence
Global Leadership Foundation Emotional Intelligence Test
The test results are interesting as I felt that I have good relationship management skills but the test showed this as my weakest area. It did confirm my thoughts about my self management skills.
I scored highly in the Social-Awareness category, which is not that surprising given my role as an EAL teacher and Development Officer for International Education. I have worked on building my racial literacy and acknowledge my white privilege. I hope that I use my position to help raise ethnic minorities and make families feel seen and heard in the work I do.
After finishing the test, I went back and reflected on self awareness and discovered that I do exhibit many of the qualities such as:
- Embrace a growth mindset.
- Set boundaries.
- Recognize destructive habits.
- Get better at anticipating things so you can come up with an action plan.
- Ask the right questions.
On reflection, these are skills that I have developed as an adult after experiencing Gender Based Violence in a previous relationship and seeking help through supportive agencies and counselling. While this was a very difficult time in my life, I am a better person and have learned to like myself as a result of the support I have received, from family, friends and colleagues.
MLLC Module 2 – Emotional intelligence: Core competencies
Core competencies of emotional intelligence
Emotional and social intelligence is the capacity for recognising our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, and for managing emotions effectively in ourselves and in others. It describes the behaviours that sustain people in challenging roles, or as their careers become more demanding, and it captures the qualities that help people deal effectively with change.
After watching a short clip by Daniel Goleman, I recorded some of my initial understanding of the significance of each of the four domains of emotional intelligence:
Self-awareness is the ability to focus on yourself and how your actions, thoughts, or emotions do or don’t align with your internal standards.
Self-management is your ability to regulate your behaviours, thoughts, and emotions in a productive way. This means excelling in both personal and professional responsibilities for the benefit of yourself and your team.
Social Awareness is the ability to take the perspective of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds and cultures. The ability to understand social and ethical norms for behaviour and to recognize family, school, and community resources and supports
Good relationship management is about communication, conflict management, and people skills
My Reflections on my strengths
- What experiences would give evidence for your thinking?
I feel that I have good self management and relationship management skills.
Through my role as an EAL teacher , it is vital that I am able to communicate effectively with staff, pupils and families. This is also true of my International Education Development Officer role. I am able to initiate contact with others and cultivate friendship. I resist stereotypes and stand up for the rights of others. This was developed over my time, supporting refugees and asylum seeker families to access education and welcome them into Glasgow.
I consider myself skilled at monitoring my own thoughts, feelings, and actions in the workplace comes. I have good time management, meeting all deadlines giving to me. I value self care and make boundaries to ensure I have a work-life balance and don’t suffer from burn out. I have excellent organisational skills: prioritise jobs to do well, meet deadlines, and set goals.
- What might those you work with suggest?
Practicing teamwork and collaborative problem-solving are tools I use in both my roles. Colleagues seek my opinion and advice and I offer support and help when needed. I stay calm under pressure and make decisions quickly and effectively, weighing all options. Colleagues are reassured by my confident in my your knowledge, skills, and abilities. I am a valued member of the team.
MLLC Module 1 – Diversity and anti-racism
Learning outcomes
- To enhance awareness of social identities and how this can influence your leadership.
- To enhance awareness of the importance of different forms of diversity in teams.
- To engage in personal reflection around anti-racism.
- To reflect on your leadership role in promoting diversity and anti-racism.
Social identities
Reflection task
What identities do you think about most often?
As an EAL teacher, First Language and Ethnicity are the identities that I think most about. In the current economical climate, Socio-Economic identity are also closely considered when planning events and work.
What identities do you think about least often?
As I work with young children, sexual orientation and sex are the least considered by myself, although with resent news and laws passed across trans rights, these are becoming more widely discussed in Primary school. This can cause problems for those who work in the Catholic sector and work needs to be done to make sure that all pupils are represented and all families feel welcome in all our establishments.
What are your own identities that you would like to learn more about?
Coming from a working class background, I feel that my socio-economic indentity is the one I struggle with the most. I would have considered myself working class until I sat and reflected on this task, I chose lower-middle class as its hard to let go of the shared identify with my parents.
What are your own identities that have the strongest effect on how you perceive yourself?
Age and Religious/Spiritual Affliction have the strongest effect. With age, I have become more confident and happy within myself. As a Christian, I am guided by my faith to live a good life and treat others with kindness and respect.
What identities have the greatest effect on how others perceive you?
Within my role as an EAL teacher and International Development Officer, my Race, Ethnicity and sometimes, gender are the greatest effect on how I am perceived by colleagues and families. I hope I am an ally and use my white privilege to effect change wherever I can.
Which components of the personal identity wheel were hard to fill out?
As stated above. the socio-economic status gave me pause to think and it is uncomfortable to say I have moved from a working class background to a ‘better’ social class.
Why is it important to critically reflect on our identities?
Firstly, maintaining self-identity is important because it strengthens your character. That is, when we know who we are, have confidence in our self and are able to identify our strengths, we emerge as stronger individuals. Secondly, it keeps us unique and distinguishes us from everyone else.
What is the value in completing activities like this with your team?
As white educators, it is important that we spent time reflecting on our own identity to allow us to see were we have privilege or challenges within our society and how we can use our own place in society to support our families.
Anti Racism
‘Not seeing race does little to dismantle racist structures or improve the lives of people of colour. In order to do so, we must see race. We must see who benefits from their race, who is affected by negative stereotyping of theirs, and on whom power and privilege is bestowed – not just because of their race, but also their class and gender. Seeing race is essential to changing the system’.
Personal reflective questions
- What actions are you taking to ‘see race’?
I am working with SMT in supporting Pupil Voice to allow all to be seen and heard.
When planning work, I reflect on the purpose and resources used to ensure they are relevant and the pupils within my class can see themselves in the materials offered.
I call out unacceptable behaviour and tell the offender to stop. Try to stay low-key and try not to escalate the situation. Point out why the behaviour is offensive but make it factual – no adjectives, no attributing motives and no emotion. Provide reassurance to the victim.
- What anti-racist leadership actions are you taking?
I am part of Ed Scotland ‘Building Racial Literacy’ Cohort 3 and undertaking this course parallel with Middle Leadership Leading Change. The courses are completing each other and supporting me as an Anti-Racist teacher. To complete BRL course – an action plan will be submitted.
I also signpost my colleagues to good training and professional reading, as well as sharing my own journey to support my establishment to be Anti-Racist.
Building Racial Literacy – Task 2
Growing a social justice legacy involves looking for ways to disrupt systemic racism. This second task of the Building Racial Literacy programme is meant to deepen some of the learning from webinar 1, focusing on understanding how racism operates on a structural, societal level.
For my score, as a white woman I scored very highly – 97%. I have taken part in this type of privilege test before as part of previous training within my role as an EAL teacher so knew that this score would be high. I feel it is important for white people, especially educators, to be reminded of our privilege and the barriers faced by some of our families. Before undertaken anti-racist work, I didn’t automatically connect white privilege and historic racism. It can be uncomfortable and for me, it helped to change my mindset. Before my anti-racist journey I would have considered white privilege to be along the lines of black youths being more likely to be stopped and searched by the police. I didn’t noticed the small everyday reminders, like only having light skin tone plasters in our first aid box at school.
MLLC Module 1 – Coaching as a model of practice
Learning outcomes
- Learn about the coaching spectrum and identify the differences between coaching and mentoring.
- Learn about the GROW model of coaching.
- Learn about different kinds of coaching questions.
- Plan a coaching conversation using some of the coaching questions.
- Reflect on that coaching conversation.
Coaching and mentoring – the coaching spectrum
The difference between coaching and mentoring to me….
A mentor is someone who shares their knowledge, skills and/or experience, to help another to develop and grow. A coach is someone who provides guidance and helps them reach their full potential. Coach and student are equals working in partnership. Coach does not require direct experience of student’s role. Mentor has more experience than student and shares it with more junior or inexperienced employee.
The Ten Principles of Coaching (Merlevede and Bridoux 2004)
- Be non-judgmental.
- Be non-critical.
- Believe that people have all the answers to their problems within them.
- Respect a person’s confidentiality.
- Be positive and believe that there are always solutions to issues.
- Pay attention to recognising and pointing out strengths and building and maintaining self-esteem.
- Challenge individuals to move beyond their comfort zone.
- Break down big goals into manageable steps.
- Believe that self-knowledge improves performance.
- Hold a genuine willingness to learn from the people you coach.
GROW template for coaching conversation
| Goal |
| What are your ideal outcomes?
Who are the key people in your network of support?
|
| Reality |
| How will we measure success?
How will you stay self-aware and mindful when things get busy?
|
| Options |
| Tell me about a time when the problem happened and you were able to get to grips with it better. What was different about that time?
Have you discussed this with anyone else? What were their initial thoughts or reactions?
|
| Wrap-up |
| Who else may be affected by this? How do you think you can address this?
What else can you do to set this initiative in place?
Is there anything else that occurs to you?
|
MLLC: Five characteristics of middle leadership – self reflection
My coaching wheel:
3.4.1 Develop and sustain a range of inclusive and supportive relationships, processes and practices which promote a culture of self-evaluation in line with agreed strategic and operational priorities
3.4.3 Collaborate with colleagues, learners, parents/carers and families and the wider learning community in identifying, agreeing and implementing improvement priorities
Middle Leaders Leading Change – Module 1: Section 2 – Five characteristics of middle leadership
In Conversation With – Dr Kylie Lipscombe (Bing video)
Notes taken while watching:
- Formal position
- Gives a backing or ‘street cred’ to position. Do you have to be a teacher to be classed as a middle leader? Does it need to be formal?
- Teacher agency
- Informal teacher leadership – is this middle leadership? ML influence change and have an impact of the learning and teaching happening in school.
- Positionality
- difficult to balance teaching and new role at times. Middle leaders at across roles and work between school and the system of change. work in a subculture between school management and teachers to bring change.
- Relational leading
- trust is major factor and so important. Collaboration is key. Mentoring staff and leading new practices, through CPD or peer observation, team teaching etc.
- Accountability
- burn out is a real risk, make it manageable! Formal roles need to have a remit that is clearly defined.
Middle Leaders Leading Change – Module 1: Section 1 – Middle leadership conditions and characteristics
For module 1 the learning outcomes are:
- Self-awareness
- increase knowledge of the conditions for effective middle leadership
- consider the 5 characteristics of effective middle leadership as outlined by Dr Kylie Lispcombe
- Diversity
- start to consider and identify own social identities and reflect on the various ways those identities become visible or more keenly felt at different times
- start to consider different aspects of diversity and anti-racism
- Leadership of change
- start to consider own area of change and how this links to own strengths and areas for development
- Coaching as a model of practice
- further develop knowledge of coaching and practise listening and questioning with a partner
- identify a co-coach to work with over the coming year.
Section 1 – Middle leadership conditions and characteristics
I enjoyed the reading for this section, especially this quote:
Middle leaders have the potential to impact areas such as teacher
capacity, school reform, teacher motivation, morale and most
importantly, but less commonly reported, student learning
(Lipscombe et al., 2021)
Notes while reading (Padlet Paper)
- positionality
- Positionality between senior leaders and teachers means that middle leaders operate in two subcultures, one as a formal school leader and often as a support for senior leaders. To support, facilitate, and occasionally oversee classroom teaching and learning, they also serve as a leader and teacher colleague. This positionality, which is frequently referred to as being “in the middle,” means that middle leaders are in a great position to direct teaching and learning in the classroom. Middle leaders require senior leadership support.
- role clarity
- principals and middle leaders need to work within their own establishments to develop their own localised role descriptions. Role description also gives middle leaders clear-cut duties that are communicated to and understood by other teachers.
- trusting relationships
- Middle leaders are often acknowledged experts in the classroom (Bennett et al., 2007), affording them a level of respect with both teachers and school leaders. Good relationship practices are key considerations for middle leaders as they work between senior leaders and teachers.
- teacher collaboration
- To guarantee that teacher collaboration leads to gains in teaching and learning, it must be well planned and managed.
- To guarantee that teacher collaboration leads to gains in teaching and learning, it must be well planned and managed.
