This week's discussion focused on the feelings aspect of collaboration--passion for the job, building relationships with coworkers, and our own personal emotional intelligence.
I did not realize how passionate I was about becoming a librarian until I was well into my first semester of graduate school. After all, it had to be passion that drove me to enroll at the same exact time as losing my beloved, eleven-year-long half-time position as an ARD facilitator and returning full-time to the classroom for the first time in seventeen years. I believe it was the master's program that got me through that first year as a returning teacher; the act of learning, and the excitement I felt about the process and the content, spilled over to my colleagues and my students. Passion is contagious, and people want to be a part of it!
As a special education teacher, I work with almost all grade levels. The ARD process is, by its very nature, collaborative, as is the "sharing" of students with their general education teachers. I have to maintain good relationships with my colleagues in order to serve our students well and connect the learning from both settings for them. I see this as good training for staff relationships in a future library position.
Dr. Long invited us to take a 146-question emotional intelligence test. The questions were interesting, but the results were not surprising. Overall, my emotional intelligence is "fairly good", with a high positive mindset and good skills at reading others' emotions with empathy and social insight. I do need to work on managing conflict (I tend to avoid it) and being more assertive when marketing my own skills and ideas. I will need to work on this if I am to make myself indispensable as a school librarian; by recognizing my strengths and marketing what I can offer to the campus, I can begin to lead in the process of collaboration.
I did not realize how passionate I was about becoming a librarian until I was well into my first semester of graduate school. After all, it had to be passion that drove me to enroll at the same exact time as losing my beloved, eleven-year-long half-time position as an ARD facilitator and returning full-time to the classroom for the first time in seventeen years. I believe it was the master's program that got me through that first year as a returning teacher; the act of learning, and the excitement I felt about the process and the content, spilled over to my colleagues and my students. Passion is contagious, and people want to be a part of it!
As a special education teacher, I work with almost all grade levels. The ARD process is, by its very nature, collaborative, as is the "sharing" of students with their general education teachers. I have to maintain good relationships with my colleagues in order to serve our students well and connect the learning from both settings for them. I see this as good training for staff relationships in a future library position.
Dr. Long invited us to take a 146-question emotional intelligence test. The questions were interesting, but the results were not surprising. Overall, my emotional intelligence is "fairly good", with a high positive mindset and good skills at reading others' emotions with empathy and social insight. I do need to work on managing conflict (I tend to avoid it) and being more assertive when marketing my own skills and ideas. I will need to work on this if I am to make myself indispensable as a school librarian; by recognizing my strengths and marketing what I can offer to the campus, I can begin to lead in the process of collaboration.
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