Slow down and listen...

I started the day with a very slow walk.  After an epic day of walking yesterday, and a very sore knee there really wasn't an option for anything else.

Yesterday was a HUGE day.  My early morning walk was listening to podcasts, my late afternoon walk with Susan was all about chatting and catching up on each other's lives.  My evening walk was a stroll along the beach with Grant, after our picnic tea.  

This morning's walk was again listening to podcasts but it was different.  It was SLOW, slightly PAINFUL, with a very sore right knee and it was reflective.  As I first listened to 'slowing down' I had a new insight into my reflection on my practice. It really is fact that we learn far more by reflecting on our experiences than we ever do while experiencing something. I also learnt a lot about the power of procrastination.  On this, my first week back at work for 2017, much of my week seems to have been procrastination.  This podcast helped me realise the potential of incomplete tasks, and the value of leaving something and coming back to it with fresh eyes!  If we complete a task, we often do it rapidly, settling for our first idea.  If we procrastinate for too long we are often pressured into completion of an idea that is not well thought out or developed, but if we procrastinate, re-visit, reflect, we can often be more creative and complete work that is innovative.  

For me as a Professional Learning Solutions, Ministry Accredited Facilitator, there is a huge a amount of food for thought in this podcast.  How do we deliver professional development, and support transformational change that allows for a degree of procrastination? My initial thoughts are this:

We need to:

• Develop a relationship with the people we work with, a deep, trusting relationship.  This takes time, and brings the tension of beginning the work, developing the relationship. Increasingly I think we need an intricate mix of blended ways of working. Our relationship begins to develop with the very first contact, the phone call or email, and continues well beyond our last session.  
• Foster collaborative ways of working.  As the relationship(s) develop, we are increasingly compelled to collaborate.  
• Be transparent in our ways of working, actions, processes, activities, goals.
• Model and encourage reflection.
• Inquire into our own practise and share our learning journey.
• Explicitly identify, acknowledge and value ways of working and being. 
• Be vulnerable.  Share our own learning and vulnerability.
• Identify, acknowledge and build on capabilities and capacities.
• Foster sustainable change.

I am very excited about the year ahead.  Unlike my teaching colleagues I do not have a class to prepare for.  I have something unique to us in our role as facilitators, something I am beginning to identify more and more as a unique privilege.  I have the privilege of meeting new educators, with a passion for learning.  I have the privilege of walking alongside them in an inquiry, unique to them, their context, their place, their journey.  I have the privilege of being able to bring different perspectives, resources, ways of working, to support and extend the incredible journey educators make daily to improve outcomes for all our learners, the future of our world.   

So, off now to work on my own inquiry... time to really reflect on my incredible PPLP session with Margaret and prepare for gathering evidence as my own inquiry grows this year.  Indeed an exciting time ahead....