Last year I started thinking that I was going to do my capstone on the lack of qualifications of those in leadership roles in school divisions. I had been shocked to hear that many Vice Principals did not hold Masters degrees and I was even more alarmed when I discovered the number of Principals who also lacked a Masters degrees. I quickly realised upon doing some research that my school division is not the ‘norm’ provincially or nationally. As a result, I needed to get over my alarm and focus rather on what I am passionate about, not what bugs me.
I am personally vested in the application of inclusive learning environments as I have two family members that experienced inclusion, or lack of inclusion differently which has had serious impacts on their lives. Upon completing research I was even more animated and passionate in sharing best practices. This became the topic of my capstone. My struggle was staying focused and where to maintain the focus. When I get talking about inclusion one would quickly see the level of my enthusiasm for this topic … but I lacked focus. Thank heavens for my Capstone adviser who was able to help me find a direction that I could not only focus on but also tie it to developing leadership skills. I quickly devoured article after article and began disappearing into the rabbit hole and losing focus again. I found a number of books that discussed inclusion but I still had not found my target for my capstone. At Teachers’ Convention I went to a speaker, Shelley Moore, who finally spoke of inclusion as I view it. She was able to articulate what I had not been able to get my tongue around. She was the flashlight that finally shone the light where I needed to see. This did not mean I was then on a roll, I wrote, deleted, rewrote, got frustrated and then started over. Even with all this struggling, I knew I had a good topic, I just needed to get my feet under me. I finally decided to take a break from it hoping inspiration would find me and the paper would just write itself. Well, that did not happen. What I learned throughout this process was that inclusion is not easy. Almost everyone wants what is best for students, but the reality is we all struggle with different elements of inclusion, whether it is the academic programming, mental health concerns, dysregulated behaviour that is disruptive to the learning of the class, or the medical understanding of diagnosis’. How does a leader make certain they have created a learning environment that is inclusive for both students and teachers? I have finally been able to submit (for the fourth time) my capstone with hopes that it helps leaders with this very difficult topic. *if you are interested in this topic please check out my Capstone attached to my this website
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Shelly TreleavenLearning starts with a question and I am full of them :) Archives
June 2019
Categories |