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I've been away from the Padlet for a few days while I focus on my final assignment - a personal leadership story.

It's easy to get lost in all the thoughts and information that comes and gos in the brain. This assignment has been a useful piece of writing which is helping reinforce some of my thinking processes.

Even though there are no books in the library labelling me as a great thinker. I'm starting to understand how ordinary points of view are just as important as history's great philosophers.

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Yesterday we worked in groups to create this podcast for one of our assignments.

I wanted to express apologies to my partners, Rohit and Vera, since the ways I expressed myself throughout this project were abrasive and incompassionate.

Each of us had read different books which made it difficult to make connections between the texts. A strong leader would have understood this obstacle and not allow the frustration to effect their communication or moral. They would have accepted the difficulty, put down their armour and approached the work as vulnerable partners, realizing that learning together would have the best overall outcome.

Instead, I wore the armour. I wanted to make it clear I was unhappy with our progress, so I wore pride by tightly crossing arms and expressing discontent in the face. I wanted to re-record sections over and over so I wore perfectionism throughout. I wanted MY grade to be a good one so I wore fear by assuming everything we spoke about was not good enough.

These are a lot of personal 'wants'. Wanting things is extremely constraining and to be a leader that expresses freedom, I must let them go.

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Misogynoir is made up of the word misogyny and noir, the french word for black.

While reading the book Teaching to Transgress I have found myself reflecting on feminist issues, maybe more than anti-racism. This surprised me since the main theme of the book is about using education for liberation within a black community.

Hearing the stories of bell hooks has given me a better understanding of how intersectionality operates. Hooks was motivated by Freire's works of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and it was the connection between their racialized experiences which actually got hooks through school. However, it was the nuance between their lived experience which really encouraged hooks to write. That nuance was found between their genders. Hooks' worldview consists of theses similarities and differences, they are dependant on each other.

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I wanted to share the beautiful work of indigenous artist and creator, Bada Jean. Bada is a close friend of mine who tries to bring stories to life and share how beautiful indigenous culture can be.

https://www.badajean.com/

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I would have considered myself a Bodhisattva in recent years since I have been trying to learn spiritual teachings from several Buddhist authors. This leadership course has allowed me to reflect on this teacher/learner dynamic and discover that it is an imperialist system, which Buddhism does not care for.

I am able to reflect and come to grips with why there is so much focus, within Buddhism, on not being told what to do, instead it focuses on self-discovery.

In the past I also did not recognize the importance of body, within mind, body and spirit, in relevance to praxis. Thích Nhât Hanh is a great educator who explains the importance of how to engage the body through action.

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Yesterday we shared our touchstone stories of leadership with a partner. I don't want to share what I spoke about on here. But, I will say that this exercise was the first time in school that I felt a strong emotional connection to the dialogue. (We discuss a lot of sensitive topics within our course and I do have some emotional ties, however naturally I'm very unsentimental. This connection moved past that).

Kaiyu was an excellent listener (thank you). Once I had finished telling my story and asked if he any questions he paused for a brief moment. Then, he raised a question which I had asked myself briefly in the past but never considered deeply. Hearing this question made me confirm a very deep intrapersonal connection and I'm very grateful for that.

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This week we will begin looking into stories from the LGBTQ2+ community. This is an area I will definitely benefit from becoming more literate in. Therefore I'm starting the week with the word dead name/deadnaming.

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"We must give unconditional love.
Loving is knowing we belong,
and understanding who we are.
Love is loneliness and feeling insecure." - Sam Samuel / Xwe-Xya-Luc

https://www.iicrd.org/sites/default/files/resources/Songhees_Lekwungen_1999_1.pdf

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Today, we are one full week into our leadership narratives course. I'm grateful for reading 'Every Person is a Philosopher' since it's a great example of how someone can make a change through education, without being a teacher per se. This is something my peers couldn't understand when I told them I was going to study educational administration. After reading the first couple chapters of 'Teaching to Transgress' I'm excited to follow this theme that expresses how we need to reconsider the teacher-student dynamic that public schools use globally.

Sharing stories has been a great way to get to know my classmates, I feel like I've got to know them a lot during these classes and I appreciate hearing the knowledge in their past experiences.

I also enjoy using Padlet, I think I need some more creative posts to make my page  a bit more colourful. Stay tuned!

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Today in class, for the story circle, I began a discussion on empathy and sympathy and the nuance between them. I think it's important to realize what form of compassion is needed for authentic connection. In a working environment enmeshment can be unproductive and happens when a person has no boundary between there-self and another person.

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This is something which recently I have found myself making a lot of. When hearing Brené Brown mention the word I felt relieved that it is something commonly found in society. This reminds me of the quote 'Opinions are the lowest form of knowledge'. When this knowledge becomes even lower it may cross the line and become untrue, often unconsciously, which makes it a confabulation.

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The leadership artifact I chose to speak about in class was this golf putter which was (temporarily) gifted to me by an 11-year-old (Jessie), so I could work on my putting skills. I was responsible for looking after Jessie on multiple occasions, however, never felt like he trusted me the same as most kids his age would. This changed the day we spent together on the driving range and putting green. I never played golf growing up and I spent a lot of the day being taught simple techniques by Jessie which drastically improved my game. After this experience I noticed a progression in our relationship.

At the time I didn't give it much thought and believed Jessie was just happy because he had proven himself to an authority figure by being good at golf. After listening to some of Brené Brown's work I have discovered a more in-depth explanation of this scenario. I think Brené would suggest that by presenting myself as a bad golfer, I would have removed my armour and been vulnerable. This created the space needed for Jesse to build on our relationship with reliance and synergy.

I think this story is a good reminder that even though, in the book Dare to Lead, Brené talks of interactions with exciting people such as the airforce and CIA, it could be the innocent stories involving her children which prove to be most valuable.

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When I first came across this word I wondered if it was derived from America and the "Eagle" represented their democratic values. Egalitarian actually comes from the latin word for equality which is 'aequalitas'. Apparently, America's symbol of the eagle is to represent authority and statehood, which represents colonial values more accurately.

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A lot of the reading for this course has directly referred to the work of Paulo Freire and his famous Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Here's a great video for some context on Freire. The narrators also discuss a critique of humanism, presenting the idea that all life is equal. An ideology which indigenous cultures have supported for a long time.

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Critical Pedagogy Beyond Humanism - After Paulo Freire

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The authors of Every Person is a Philosopher often use this term instead of the word transform. I think the significant difference between the two meanings, and in Hal Adams work, is that it focuses on rising above what you already know, using past experience usefully to inform future judgement. NOT changing what you are to create something entirely new.

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Whenever I'm reading texts for my leadership course I often find myself stopping to google the definition of new or difficult words. This has proven a useful tool for building up my technical literacy, as well as appreciating the complexities of the English language. Every day during this course I'll be posting a 'Word of the Day' to share some of the words that made me pause and research.