March 9, 2013

March 9, 2013

Leadership

Four blogs in one week?  I am feeling just a tad bit like an overachiever, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I figure today (Saturday) is a good time as any to get my blog done for the week.

This week in class, Brady and Josh led discussion on leadership.  According to my trusty dictionary.com app on my phone (Yes, I have a dictionary app on my phone.  Who doesn't?), leadership is defined as:

1. The position or function of a leader, a person who guides or directs a group.
2. The ability to lead.
3. An act or instance of leading; guidance; direction.
4. The leaders of a group.

That definition needs to be further defined by the word lead.  Lead is defined as:

To guide  in directon, course, action, opinion, etc.; bring.

I believe this definition (out of some 30) pertains the most to what we will be doing in the fall when we facilitate our recitation sections. We will guide the incoming freshmen towards being good Hixson scholars and being good representatives of Iowa State in their courses and actions as they proceed through college. 

I also had not given much consideration to seating arrangements.  Most classrooms are set up in a theatre style setting, which makes it hard when trying to discuss something.  For example, in my HIST 360 class (US History: 1900-1945), we have lots of discussions.  However, the classroom we are in is not set up very well to facilitate that.  As a future history teacher, where discussion is an intergral part of history, a good classroom set up will be imperative to facilitate good discussion.

Tomorrow is our second retreat and I'm looking forward to the icebreakers that everyone will come up with.  Bring your thinking caps for the one Sebastian and I came up with! 

As always, have a good week next week!  It's almost spring break!  And that is a fact I am certainly most joyous about!

I'll leave you with this quote which I feel relates well to what we'll be doing this fall:

"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the daily differences we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee." - Marian Wright Edelman

Go State!
Katie