Shelly Sharma’s

Educational Platform – A
Journey in Itself
EEA 535 – Dimensions of
Educational Leadership

Shelly Sharma
November 2017
 Educational Platform – A Journey in Itself
S. SHARMA

Shelly Sharma’s Educational Platform – A Journey in Itself

Introduction

Who knew what the power of a few statements could have on one’s pedagogical practice…

Having completed this educational platform I believe that it has not only strengthened the belief

that I have as an individual about life but also how those beliefs impact my professional practice.

Within my educational platform, I focused on aspects that I have learned about through research,

experience or conversation. I then focused on connecting these aspects into hopes and desires that

I have for the future educators and learners of our world.

Learner Outcomes

Learning outcomes come as a broad category but when defined and put it into concrete

statements they help in identifying the skills needed to produce better learners and educators. As

in the article “Developments” (2015) “our learners should be provided with an education that

enriches their lives (p.36)”. In my opinion, the top academic and social learning outcomes that I

believe are essential to our education system for learners by the end of grade 12 are to:

Academic Learning Outcomes

➢ Be able to make financial, ethical and honest decisions in regard to their choices in life.

➢ Pose communication skills that can help them communicate respectfully with others on a

wide range of platforms (email, phone, texting, in person conversations, and whatever ever

future platforms technology may bring forth).

➢ Have the necessary skill set to be independent learners and seek reliable information on

their own to help make their decisions.

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Social Learning Outcomes

➢ Have the necessary skills to help deal with conflict in a peaceful manner, by respecting

individuals and focusing on building positive relationships.

➢ Know the importance of community and how they can become impactful and positive

members of the communities around them – socially responsible members of society.

I chose to have these learning outcomes focus on their life after graduation because the K-12

education system in my opinion is the fundamental basis for a learner’s future life. What we teach

them and how we teach them will help shape their futures. In the “Development” (2015) article,

“earning a decent wage in adulthood… should not define our thinking about what and how children

should learn (p.36)”, which I agree with and hence why my learning outcomes are focused on

essential skills that I believe are important for learners to not only earn a decent wage but to also

help them become productive members of our community.

Our learners once they graduate become members of the community, a community that we

all reside in and as Boyce (2008) puts it, the world:

Doesn’t change one person at a time. It changes as networks of relationships from

among people who discover they share a common cause and vision of what’s

possible. They realize all of a sudden that they make up a forest, an ecosystem – a

community (p. 47).

Our learner’s today are leaders of the future, they will make up the ecosystem, an ecosystem of a

global and local communities that will shape future generations to come.

A positive step towards producing these learners here British Columbia has already been

taken through the implementation of our new curriculum. The new curriculum focuses on

preparing our learners for real life and incorporates that there is more to education than just

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learning from a book. According to the Curriculum BC website “core competencies are sets of

intellectual, personal, and social and emotional proficiencies that all students need to develop in

order to engage in deep learning and life-long learning”. These core competencies can help in

developing lifelong learners, learners who are looking for new and innovative ways to problem

solve and put their best selves forward.

Instructional Climate

The physical environment can play a big role in determining how one teaches or learns.

The physical environment can not only impact the way in which collaboration and learning takes

place but also the way in which interpersonal interactions occur.

Beichner (2014) points out that:

Successful active learning classrooms, regardless of how many students are in the

space, are designed to facilitate interactions between students as they work

collaboratively on interesting tasks. Spaces and the furnishings within them are

carefully designed with features that enable students to meet the goals of

instruction. These goals vary from course to course and intuition but they

increasingly include twenty-first century sills like problem solving, communication

and teamwork. Active learning classrooms make it easy for faculty to assign task

that require students to practice these skills as a means of learning the subject matter

(p.16).

This passage puts the physical environment of a learning space perfectly in perspective by

acknowledging that the physical space is an essential part of learning. Our learners today are not

the same as they used to be, hence our classrooms should not be the same physical environments

either. Beichner points out that learning spaces should change because “the world is different,

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information is readily accessible and most importantly our learners today are different – they learn

in different ways (p.9)”. For example, at my previous school I taught in the drama theatre, we often

had conversations as a class, the physical space allowed for it. These conversations were powerful

and fostered learning at a much deeper level. Currently in my classroom now learners barely have

enough room to work in groups because of the physical environment that comprises of computers

and desks everywhere. The physical space is limited making it difficult to practice those twenty-

first century learning skills and as Beery (2013) states “active learning is easier to do when chairs

are movable so that small group discussion is enabled…spaces themselves are agents for change

(p.382).” Changed learning environments can help in changing learning as well for the better.

SkillsYouNeed (2017) defines interpersonal skills as “the skills we use every day when we

communicate and interact with other people, both individually and in groups”. These skills can

come in the form of understanding body language, listening and questioning. When we were

younger we often asked lots of questions, we inquired, and we practiced inquiry based learning

without even knowing we were actively doing it. As education evolved we stepped away from

inquiry based learning, now we are realizing how important it is. We have started to incorporate

this approach to teaching, we have started to incorporate those interpersonal interactions again –

only for the betterment of our learners.

Learning to effectively communicate your thoughts and feelings to those around you is an

extremely important skill, a skill that many of us including our learners and myself struggle with.

I find especially with today’s technology that younger generations are hiding behind screens to

communicate with one another. I cannot tell you the number of times I have had students

interacting with each other over their mobile devices while being in the same room. Technology

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is amazing and don’t get me wrong, it can help foster learning in a whole new way but,

interpersonal interactions are still far more important.

Instructional Organization

In the future, I hope to see the traditional role of an educator morph into that of a teaching

facilitator. These facilitators would be educators who help learners discover their strengths and

weaknesses and encourage learners to be able to make their own choices about their learning and

how they learn best. Over time we have learned that every learner does not learn in the same way,

so why not leave the choices up to the learners and as educators have our job to become more

interactive so that they can learn in ways that cater best to their needs.

Brookfield (1995) points out:

The most important pedagogic knowledge we educators need to do good work is

an awareness, week in, week out, of how our students experience learning… we

need to know what’s going on in student’s heads. This is the essence of student-

centered teaching: knowing how your students experience learning so you can build

bridges that take them from where they are now to a new destination (p.62).

Let us together build those bridges together and provide more experiential learning opportunities

that best cater to our holistic learners.

The organization of the traditional school system relies on bells but wonder if these bells

were eliminated and learners worked at their own pace? Understandably some learners would still

need structure and consistency and this can still be provided. Balance could be obtained by having

an interflowing model where learners who need more structure work in designated spaces and

independent learners could have their own designated spaces. Yet there would still be areas where

they could all collaborate together. Thomas Haney Secondary in Maple Ridge is a school that runs

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on a similar format. According to the Thomas Haney School website, “students have the choice to

learn where they learn, what they learn, when they learn and how they learn it.” A model of

learning that I am quite fond of.

Community

The role of parents and guardians plays a huge impact on a learner’s abilities and education.

Greenword (1991) states that:

Considerable research now documents the contributions of parent involvement to

positive outcomes such as the following:

1. Higher academic achievement

2. Student sense of well-being

3. Student school attendance

4. Student and parent perceptions of classroom and school climate

5. Positive student attitudes and behavior

6. Student readiness to do homework

7. Increased student time spent with parents

8. Better student grades

9. Higher educational aspirations among students and parents

10. Parent satisfaction with teachers

Yet despite all the research that shows a positive relationship between parental involvement and a

learner’s success there still seems to be a lack of parental involvement in our schools today. For

future learners, I see more parent involvement to be essential to the success of our learners because

of all the reasons listed above. Interestingly enough the lack of parent involvement stems from

reasons such as the attitudes and abilities of parents, work and poor health, attitudes, knowledge

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and skills of teachers and administrators as Greenwood points out. The last reason I found

particularly interesting because I never really thought of the impact that an administrator could

have on the interactions with parents, especially the parents of learners whom they do not see on

a regular basis.

Community involvement is just as important as parental involvement. Parents, learners,

staff members at the school are part of a community in themselves – the school community. Yet

there also resides a bigger community outside that school. To be successful members of the

community there has to be a mutual understanding and sharing of information – communication

is key. Schools that are positive contributors to their communities are more successful. I have seen

this first handily in my experience at teaching at W.J. Mouat Secondary. I organized an event

called YPI – Youth Philanthropy initiative, this was one of the most rewarding experiences of my

career. This initiative involved everyone from the learners, staff, administrators, parents and

members of the community. In the future, I would like to see more experiences like this being

incorporated into our curriculum. Real life experiences that include everyone that is directly or

indirectly impacted by what happens within the school building.

Beliefs & Experience

For me what I value most in life is respect, community and learning. These are my core

values that have become more and more ingrained on a daily basis into my life. I believe that these

values are at the core of all the decisions that I make in life, they help shape who I am as a person

and who I aspire to be. The most meaningful experiences in life for me are experiences where

realization occurs. What I mean by realization occurs is when I am pushed beyond my comfort

zone to accomplish something that I felt was unachievable. I try to help push my learners to also

part take in these experiences. I tell them that if they are not nervous about doing something that

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means that they are too comfortable already and that they are not pushing themselves outside their

comfort zones. This is a feeling that they often have when they do presentations, they are so

nervous to present but after they have presented they feel as though they have accomplished a goal.

We work as a team of educator and learner towards small goals and by the end of the semester

these goals that at one point seemed so big and unachievable have now been accomplished.

Institutional Context

We are so fortunate to have the educational system that we have in our province here

compared to other places in the world, however there could still be room for change and

improvement to help foster better learning. Coming from a smaller district such as Abbotsford to

a bigger district like Surrey I have no complaints in regard to the support offered at the district

level by the Surrey. Surrey has a vast amount of resources and support to help new educators like

myself. They have leadership and mentorship programs in place and even the Surrey Teachers

Union is very helpful.

However, one of the biggest concerns regardless of if you are in a big or small district is

funding. The funding for education that comes from the provincial level I would say needs to

increase. Education is such an important part of life and to always be struggling with the amount

of financial resources put into the education system is dreadful and tiring process. Whether it be

an educator’s salary or the lack of funding to help learners engage in more hands-on learning, more

money is needed for our educational system.

In a province like British Columbia our educators have one of the lowest salaries in the

country, but not only that the standards of living in British Columbia are amongst the highest.

There seems to be a big discrepancy between the two. It is not only about the educators but about

the funding available to run school programs for our learners in our schools today. Currently I am

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at a school where the reasoning of “where is the money going to come from” to run any program

is given and as a result programs are being cut, it makes it extremely difficult to run programs or

challenge our learners beyond their expectations and to accomplish learning at a whole new level.

I find this extremely difficult. Financial support from all institutions is something that in the future

I hope will change. I am not saying that we should have unlimited funds to run schools or that

educators be paid million dollar salaries, but I do strongly believe that money is essential to provide

certain resources which then help in providing an education that is meaningful.

Leadership Behaviours

Leadership is evident in all aspects of life. Being the eldest of three children, I was always

leader to my younger siblings, in this situation I did not choose to be a leader but circumstantial

had become one. Yet, I believe that in order to lead you need to learn to follow first, and that is

why growing up I had my own leaders that I looked up to. My older cousins who taught me how

to be a good role model to my siblings.

In my career, I consider all my colleagues in one way or another leaders, leaders that I can

look up too. With that being said, a leader is a person who values relationships, communication,

community and knows how to motivate others in my opinion. In a school setting, there are many

different types of leaders. Deal and Peterson talk about the eight different roles of leaders and their

symbolic roles as historians, anthropological sleuths, visionaries, symbols, potters, poets, actors

and healers. Having recently switched districts it is hard for me to identify all these leaders at this

time in my new school. Our school has over 1500 learners and over 120 staff members, but the

leaders that I have identified so far are the historian, poet, and actor. The historian is an educator

that I work closely with, he has been here for over 10 plus years. He has seen the school go through

changes and has taught yearbook, because he has taught this course he knows the history of this

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school inside and out. He is often a person I go to ask how things have been done previously and

what has worked and what hasn’t. The poet is our Surrey Teacher’s Union school representative.

She is an intelligent woman who plays an active role in ensuring that the language in our contract

is upheld and helps develop the language we use to communicate student learning. Last but not

least the actor, this is our drama teacher. She is a vivacious and funny individual who always brings

her theatrical skills to any conversation or agenda for discussion. She is a person that can switch

the vibe of the conversation from that of a negative and resentful one to one of hopefulness and

aspiration.

Reflection

After completing this educational platform, I realized that a lot of the things I value about

the educational system are futuristic things but things that are realistically accomplishable. We as

a society are heading towards an educational system where we focus on the learner as a whole, a

holistic learner. A learner who is not only focused on one stream of learning but rather a learner

who encompass all aspects of life, community, relationships, communication, leadership and

knows their value.

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References

Beery, T. A., Shell, D., Gillespie, G., & Werdman, E. (2013). The impact of learning space on
teaching behaviors. Nurse Education in Practice, 13(5), 382–387.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2012.11.001

Boyce, B. (2008). Complexity Chaos Collapse Community Creativity Compassion Why We

Need New Ways of Thinking. Shambhala Sun, (September 2008), 42–104.

Brooksfield, S. (2017). The Four Lenses of Critical Reflection. In Becoming A Critically

Reflective Educator (2nd Edition, pp. 61–77).

Deal, T. E., & Peterson, K. D. (2000). Eight roles of symbolic leaders. The Jossey-Bass Reader
on Educational Leadership (3rd Edition). Jossey-Bass.

Greenwood, G. E., & Hickman, C. W. (2011). in Parent Involvement : Implications for Teacher
Education, 91(3), 279–288.

Kelley, B. C. (2009). Inspiration and intellect: Significant learning in musical forms and analysis.
New Directions for Teaching and Learning, (119), 35–41. https://doi.org/10.1002/tl

SkillsYouNeed. (2017). Interpersonal Skills. Retrieved from

https://www.skillsyouneed.com/interpersonal-skills.html

Thomas Haney Secondary. (n.d.). Retrieved November 24, 2017, from

http://schools.sd42.ca/thss/

Purpose of Education. (2015). Journal of Development Education, 38(2), 2015.

Core Competencies | Building Student Success - BC’s New Curriculum. (2017). Retrieved
November 22, 2017, from https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/competencies

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