5399 Week 4- Reflection - Krin Bryson

·        Describe why reflection is an important skill in leadership.

Reflection is a remark expressing careful consideration. To reflect back on the activities that were completed takes a great amount of time.  This encourages leaders to think about the process that was used in order to achieve various goals.  Reflection is a good practice to be involved in, to take time to reflect back on processes and outcomes as well as how it affected the current situation as a leader.  It allows us to pay attention to our values and theories that we put into practice every day to determine if we have, in fact, learned through our process/project.  Educators should be lifelong learners and it is imperative that we take the time to review and analyze our experiences in order to learn from them and grow in our education.  This self-regulated process assists leaders in making informed decisions.

Provide examples of reflective practices throughout this program citing examples from:

·        Course assignment activities- Throughout this internship there have been assignments that have required us to use our reflective actions to review and think back on the experience we have encountered prior to our internship. Although this was sometimes time consuming to try to “think back” it proved to be a positive experience. For me anyway it allowed me to think about the pros and cons of the situation and to review if I would in fact handle the situation the same way if I had to.  Some examples are reflecting on our 10 competencies, reflection on our Vita, which I think was very helpful, as well as the reflection on my interviews with Superintendents.

·        Blogs- I feel that posting on other interns blogs and reading their post on my blog forced me to reflect on the topic discussed. My peers’ suggestions were helpful and gave me great insight on my projects/discussion topics. The reflections on all the postings and comments were helpful and eye opening. I enjoyed reading about what others are doing around the state. I liked the reflection on the first day, first week, and first month first year assignment. It really made you think things through. I loved reading what others would do as they had great ideas that would help me.

·        Course and campus supervised logs- Course and campus supervised logs again allowed for reflection, but the site supervised reflection allowed me to get my Supervisor involved. He gave me great insight on my progress. I really learned a great deal from listening to his opinion and experiences on some of the topics we have been assigned.

·        Assessments- I gave some reflection to assessments, but I don’t recall ever getting the information in order to go back and really reflect as I am not sure what I missed on the assessments. The assignments however provide many reflections that have increased my awareness of how Superintendents should and could handle many different situations. Just having to reflect on reflection was a positive activity

·        Other intern reflection experiences- The web conference was a nice experience as our professors have the wonderful ability to ask questions that make you think about how various things are handled or how you are doing with the assignments. I enjoyed the web conference in this last class, 5399

   

Describe how you plan to use reflective practice to improve your leadership skills – provide some specific suggestions for applying the skills of reflection.

Using reflective practice has impacted my practice differently at various times.  I try to go back and reflect on decisions and completed projects to examine the “things done right” and the “things that we could improve upon.” I understand the importance of debriefing and it is more common practice to do this as a team.  Reflection as a team allows me to examine the different points of view of my team and to see the situation from their focus area.  I believe that reflective practice takes a great deal of self-discipline to stop the fast-past work regime and jot down reflections.  While this is time consuming it is a very good practice to acquire and make into a habit.  It does allow you to review and re-think your decisions to ensure the right decision was made. Personally I am not a verbose person and my reflections are short and concise. I do not feel that all reflections must be a certain length as long as the thought process is complete. While there are times my reflections are long (depending on the issue) I feel that if someone is made to type/write a certain amount of words, you are not allowing true reflection to take place.  It becomes “watered down” with words in order to meet the requirements of the assignment, which can sometimes defeat the purpose of reflection. 

I will be able to benefit by maintaining this strategy in the future because it will allow me to review practices and decisions that I make as a leader.  In my current position we work in teams a great deal. I can foresee using this practice as a team in order to reflect on our decisions and discussions of meetings and projects.  This will help when developing new products and services for our schools as well.  I believe we will take steps when developing new services to possibly include brainstorming, needs assessments, using our ISO flow chart for developing new services, analysis  of relevance check-sheet, and reflections.  Reflection can be a cathartic process when performed properly and can greatly benefit both the individual and the organization.

Throughout my internship program I have used the reflective practice and it has provided me with insight of projects I was involved in earlier that I had not taken the time to go back and review.  It afforded me with the opportunity to re-think some projects I worked on and develop ways to improve on those projects.  I feel that reflection is a valuable business tool and I will continue to implement the reflective practice throughout my career.