Cluster Meeting on Learning and development and Work-life Balance

The sharing by the various KPs on Learning and Development and Work-life Balance is really a learning journey for me. Firstly, it was the first time that I was involved in a Cluster Meeting which was not restricted to Math KPs only. Secondly, I learnt a lot of the different perspectives with regards to the topic that was given by our Superintendant Mrs Ong. I was really very nervous about saying out my thoughts when it is my turn to speak. I guess I never can get the stage-fright feeling off me....

Nevertheless, this is waht I have learnt:

Work-life balance (or harmony as many of the KPs have decided to change it to) can be achieved when there is learning and deveopment. When we learn something , that knowledege would (even though very little) help in improving the ways that we do things. We get more efficient in our thinking, teaching and doing work and this in turn would help us put aside more time for ourselves, family and our hobbies. Of course it is our choice to decide whether we would like to achieve a 50-50 , 60-40 'balance'. If we enjoy doing work , 70-30( with 70 being work) is also alright as long as we know that our family or our health is not jeopardized in any way. Quality vs quantity....

Also as leaders, we should try our best to get to know our teachers so that we know what is good for them and what is important to them. If the schools' needs and the teachers' needs are aligned then there should be some sense of work-life harmony. When teachers know that their leaders care, they are happy to come to work. They would teach happily in class and this feeling could be translated to happy students and more engagement in class, hence better attitudes and results...

Learning new things is important, no matter how small the fact is. But why do we need to learn? We need to learn in order to improve ourselves and learn new pedagogies that will help our students learn better. The new generation of students are more IT savvy and very much distracted by media (youtube, facebook, etc) so we need to be in the same page as them in order to know them better so that we can engage them more in conversations and hence work. By learning new ways of interacting with students and how to teach them more effectively, we also raise our own self-esteem and this translates to more willingness to try new pedagogy and the cycle continues.....

When we, as leaders learn, we become good role models for our students and teachers. We learn when we read articles, literature review, watch TV or movies or just by talking to our peers and students. Hence learning can take place anywhere. It's just how you make use of this knowledge to better ourselves and our lives....

Coincidentally just before we entered the meeting, Hong Heng was sharing about extremedeals.com, the place where we could buy cheap stuff for our gadgets. Those of us who have IPhones were really excited with this new knowledge and I guess some of us will make use of this new knowledge to enhance our own lives...I rest my case....:)