No job is all blue skies and sunny days. In fact, as a teacher, I have come to expect unpredictable weather and learnt how to keep from being blown off course. It takes some steady steering sometimes. Today I had to hold on and steer for dear life.
Teaching-wise, actually it was not such a bad day at all. I added more to the modifications I had made to yesterday’s first lesson, and the third and final class went remarkably smoothly.
What went wrong was based not on teaching, the core of my job, but on the accumulation of several non-teaching tasks which, despite my well-reasoned appeals to distribute them evenly within the department, continue to be allocated to me. This is as unfair to other teachers, who feel left out of decision-making, as it is to me, who completely forgot how to execute the breathing process today. I shall omit the tantalizing details regarding more than one last straw that broke this camel’s back today. Fast-forward to this evening.
It all left me wondering what goes wrong: in every workplace there are struggles, but my own experiences, and others I have heard of, seem to suggest that TESOL (abroad) workplaces are exceptionally dysfunctional. Is it because the industry is not really- if we are to be honest- professionalized? Is it because cultural clashes are par for the course? Is it because no self-respecting, sane person would ever consider packing up to embark on an Anglovangelism mission? All of the above? Surely, the sheer lack of professionalism I have seen tolerated here would get a MacDonalds clerk fired. And we are educators?
Suffice it to say that my affective filter is on double-glazing this evening, and I am finding it very difficult to focus on my studies- or anything else, for that matter. What did help was flipping back to the goal sheet I had the rare prudence of drawing up before I started this course. It reminded me that I am going somewhere with this. I can, at least, aspire to be the lotus flower rooted in the mud.
Showing posts with label organizational culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label organizational culture. Show all posts
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Learning to be a Learning Organization
A professional note on a personal event, tonight. Tomorrow is my birthday, and in keeping with tradition I have prepared a sweet treat for my departmental colleagues at work. It is usually a substantial carrot cake, but since a cake can only have so many slices, I decided to try something different this year. Tomorrow’s treat is a tiny (cubic centimeter) piece of fondant wrapped in coloured tissue paper- one piece for each one of 120 staff members who are in my professional orbit. What makes this relevant to the matter of TESOL professionalism? During the Zen practice of wrapping 120 pieces of fondant, I recalled the venomous atmosphere of the department on my last birthday. For a long time, my work environment seemed to be a viper’s nest, and I had become so accustomed to working around this that I didn’t even notice at what moment the turning point came, or what made the difference. But the workplace I will walk into tomorrow morning is one that- despite its difficulties- houses individuals who are looking forward, rather than pulling against each other, or even backwards. This truly is something to celebrate.
Among the avalanche of reading materials for my current study module there is a review of the work of Peter Senge, whose 1990 opus The Fifth Discipline pioneered the concept of the ‘learning organization’. When discussing the concept with my tutor, I automatically considered my own workplace to be anything but a learning organization. In retrospect, I see that the workplace I had been evaluating was a construct of past experience. My image of it had not kept up with recent developments, both in the college itself and in my department. My organization does not yet reach the lofty goals set by Senge, but there has been a groundswell of dedication to making things better on a holistic, ongoing basis. Staff are no longer complaining about minute hiccups, they are conspiring to beat the negativity and poor standards that have plagued us. Though not yet what Senge would call a ‘learning organization’, it seems we may have taken the first steps towards learning to be a learning organization. And that is a gift I will not refuse.
Among the avalanche of reading materials for my current study module there is a review of the work of Peter Senge, whose 1990 opus The Fifth Discipline pioneered the concept of the ‘learning organization’. When discussing the concept with my tutor, I automatically considered my own workplace to be anything but a learning organization. In retrospect, I see that the workplace I had been evaluating was a construct of past experience. My image of it had not kept up with recent developments, both in the college itself and in my department. My organization does not yet reach the lofty goals set by Senge, but there has been a groundswell of dedication to making things better on a holistic, ongoing basis. Staff are no longer complaining about minute hiccups, they are conspiring to beat the negativity and poor standards that have plagued us. Though not yet what Senge would call a ‘learning organization’, it seems we may have taken the first steps towards learning to be a learning organization. And that is a gift I will not refuse.
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