My journey with faculty leadership and management.

The end of week 1.  So much has happened its hard to believe its only been one week.  I’ve enjoyed a productive week, and feel contented with my revised productivity strategy.

I needed to perform a delicate balance this week.  Some of my staff I believe are getting a little impatient with the amount of extra responsibilities I assume, which takes my attention from management of them and the department. This has caused me to focus on visible task completion.  Obvious things like covering classes to allow staff to take care of personal issues, distributing information, producing assessment tasks etc.  As I have done this, I realise that at times some of my roles could cross over.  This does mean some promotion of my online life, of which my staff are generally unaware.  This hasn’t been purposeful, simply a point of me not self promoting.  If they had attended one of my PD sessions, they would be aware but this has not happened as yet.  They tend to receive the PD on demand anyway.

I’ve had a couple of moments this week I’ve remembered important jobs when in a position unable to note them down, for example as driving home.  I am aware that one of my real weaknesses is retaining this in memory.  If I don’t make a note somewhere, I will generally forget it.  I do have the phone and iPod Touch with me at most times, which means I do have access to text and voice entry.  I need to develop the habits of getting the thoughts stored somewhere, and then accessing that storage to process the task.  An obvious choice should be Evernote, as this is on the iPod Touch.  If driving, I can add a voice note.  Something to consider.

Looking forward to week 2, where my other responsibilities begin to appear.  Thursday is annual conference for State Review Panel and District Review Panel Chairs for Health Education.  I am hoping to convince the group to adopt a different approach to the distribution of information in an effort to assist teachers of the subject.