BUILDING COHESIVE LEARNING TEAMS USING A SHARED LITERATURE EXPERIENCE

1. BUILDING COHESIVE LEARNING TEAMS USING A SHARED LITERATURE EXPERIENCE Presented at The 30th Annual International Lilly Conference on College Teaching, November 2010 Carol Godsave, Educational Administration The College at Brockport Brockport, NY

2. BELIEF • Learning is an active, constructive, contextual process. New knowledge is acquired in relation to previous knowledge: information becomes meaningful when it is presented and acquired in some type of framework. (Grunert, Obrien, Millis & Cohen, 2008) • Prospective school leaders need to understand the processes of change, culture and most important communication. (Patterson, Grenny, McMillan and Switzer, 2002)

3. THE TASK • Target: Students from a variety of school settings starting their first course in Educational Administration • Challenge: Coalesce them into a working team; Put aside their personal experiences and work from a shared experience

4. THE PLAN: ASSIGN READING UNRELATED TO THE COURSE, BUT HAVING LEADERSHIP LINKS

5. THE BOOK

6. ESSENTIAL QUESTIONS • How are events of the book tied to aspects of leadership? • What other learning tasks can be developed from the events of the book? • Planning ahead: Are there sources of literature commonly read by students before entering the class? • How can you maximize reading and discussion time?

7. THE PROCESS • Each student sent a copy of Miracle in the Andes a month before class start with instructions to have read the book before class began. • During the first class weekend, students were placed in small, randomly selected groups. • Each group was given a task card to complete. • Groups reported out, summarizing their discussions.

8. THE PROCESS (CONT.) • Later in the semester, additional task cards were used. • Throughout the semester, “Miracle” was used as a touchstone for new concept discussions. • 6 months after the course, students were asked to relate their shared reading with their acquisition of leadership skills and group cohesion

9. TASK CARD SAMPLE • Leadership discussion: Miracle in the Andes • You have been assigned the role of facilitator. Please lead a discussion using the following suggested steps. Please feel free to assign roles and tasks to others. Note also that the second to last task is an individual project. Good luck. (Time: 22 minutes) • Task: Discuss Miracle in the Andes using the following : • 5 min: Briefly recap the story or book. • 1 min: How did Perrado grow as a leader? • 3 min: What were some of the leadership decisions that had to be made in order for the group to move to the final process, that of being rescued. You may want to look at the evidence of leadership growth in stages. The first day vs. week vs. month etc. • 5 min.: Think of a similar “decision” for growth in your district: What were its long range effects? • 3 min.: Why is this book significant? (Why did I choose it?) What implications does it have for leadership in the school arena? • 2 min: Write 2 leadership strategies/goals for your leadership growth that this discussion has given you. This will be done individually and can be incorporated into your journal. • 3 min: Prepare a short leadership rule as a result of your discussion. Choose one person to be your spokesperson. You will be presenting this to the group.

10. GETTING STARTED • Choosing literature: Freshman Read programs • All students will have read the literature upon entering the college as Freshmen • Look for links to your discipline • Be on the lookout for links in your leisure reading • Consider specific chapters in books Example: Chapter 7, The Kite Runner (Hosseini, 2004)

11. LATER IN THE SEMESTER Groups were assigned leadership qualities such as creativity, integrity, collaboration as found in Finding your leadership style (Glanz, 2002) Each group had to depict their assigned quality topic in a Miracle in the Andes “tableau”

12. STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES: How did the shared reading experience enhance your leadership? • It was inspiration for my leadership growth • Change is hard, but seeing how the team met challenge made me realize it’s okay to challenge my staff. • Leadership is interactive, not static and not a quick fix. • You need a tolerance for leadership style • You must understand your team to move forward • It’s okay to take risks. We sometimes need to push ourselves beyond our limits

13. Having a common situation brought the group together. We refer to the book as our “roots”.

14. THE APPLICATION • You will be broken into four groups and given a very short story to read. • Each group will have a task card with a specific discipline indicated. You will also find numbers at the top of the task card. 1=Facilitator 2= Secretary 3=Reporter 4=Time keeper Others=Observers • Complete the task card • Be prepared to report on your experience

15. Follow-up Group 1 reporter move to group 2, group 2 to 3 etc. Give a brief summary of your activities. Whole group: Observers Describe the process of coming together? Give you impressions of the process. All: How might you apply this to your work ? Questions