Thankful

It’s definitely the time for a thankful post!

Thank goodness for:

• supportive, fun relationships
• the job that I seriously enjoy
• changes
• administrative help
• toaster ovens
• gutsy moves
• Ka-Glom’s puzzle mode

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Dynamic Balance

A watched pot never boils. But how do you know when your water is ready if you’re not watching?

Success often involves taking your eyes off the prize to focus instead on the task of attaining it. So how do you know when it’s within reach if you’re not looking at it?

In both examples, the answer is that you need two separate skill sets and that you must effectively balance and coordinate them.

I wish this could be addressed in my professional development plan, but I don’t know where to start. Thoughts?

On Harvesting

We coordinators are awesome.

We know a ton of people: clients, volunteers, teachers, coworkers, other program staff, support staff, community partners, and the list continues.

We’re also never bored.  Ever.

Odds are good that:

• you know one of us.
• at some point you’ll want one of us to do something for you.
• we will not be just idling around hoping you’ll give us a task to accomplish.

We love to help.  But before you ask, consider: are you working with us, or are you harvesting?  Working with us will lead to healthy, happy, long-term working relationships.  Harvesting our output will not.

Loaded Basket by meganpru on Flickr

Characteristics of harvesting:

1. short turn-around time
2. little done (by you) lately to add value to the programs we coordinate
3. the only two types of conversations we really have are “Hi, how are you?” and “Can you do this for me?”
4. It often has a sense of just passing through, or of quickly collecting something.

Maputo Handshake by ElektraCute on Flickr

Characteristics of working with us:

1. lead time
2. help us out, especially if we ask  (but nobody’s keeping exact score)
3. tell us about your bigger picture… and ask us about ours
4. It usually has a sense of mutual respect and feels like a human interaction.

Now, let’s practice:

Based on the above descriptions, evaluate the following paraphrased emails.  Are they working with the coordinator, or are they harvesting?

A) Hi.  I volunteered with you six months ago.  Things sure have been crazy.  Could you write me a recommendation?  I need it tomorrow.  Thanks.

B) Great to see you the other day!  I’m glad you that blog post about the neuroscience of learning answered your question.  Say, I’m starting to put together a presentation.  If you have any student writing I could use for examples, could you send it over sometime in the next couple of months?  Thanks.

When in doubt, it all comes down to time-frame.

A short time-frame leaves very little room to maneuver.  Without flexibility, it’s much more difficult to maintain a high quality of work for your task and the others I already have.  Set us both up for success and give some lead time.

What would you add?

In Case You Were Wondering

Oops, I Did It Again! by ucumari on Flickr

I thought I should probably acknowledge the fact that I just randomly didn’t post for something like two weeks.

The short answer is that everything’s fine. The slightly longer answer is that my job and my personal life were both particularly engrossing during that time and there wasn’t room to blog too.

I seriously considered whether to keep the blog at all. For now, my answer is yes. It’s my little space to write regularly and think out loud. I enjoy it and I think it’s good for me. So it stays.

However, I’m going to move to two posts per week: Mondays and Wednesdays. I hope to move back up to three at some point in the future.

That’s it for now. Enjoy the rest of the week!

On Vacation

I’m officially on vacation till Monday, September 28th.

Have a great week!

Focus

I keep thinking to myself, “Ok, I’m going to be really focused today.”

And then I think about what I’m going to focus on:

• curriculum
• volunteers
• student attendance
• outreach
• preparing for this week’s appointments
• preparing for break

And I realize that this is not focus.  It is, however, a starting point.

One-Page Strategic Plan!

My organization has a one-page strategic plan, and it’s pretty much the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

Go us!

Seriously, I’ve been a skeptic of the net value of a strategic plan given the amount of time put into writing it and the likelihood of it being used. With this one, though? Consider me on board!

Please Close Your Laptop

I have to go to bed soon, but I wanted to quick note a challenge that I faced in my diligent note-taking that surprised me.

I was at a presentation at which laptops were provided because part of the agenda was to have us explore a particular online course. I decided to just use that computer for my notes instead of the one I brought.

So I popped it open and started myself a word document. I happily took notes for a few minutes, then we did an interactive activity. When we came back and were regrouping, I opened up the laptop to get ready to take more notes. The presenter came over and very kindly and with no edge at all asked me to keep it closed because they were going to start again.

When I said I was using it to take notes, she thought for a beat or two and then said ok. I kept it closed anyway though. I thought that despite whatever assumptions she had made about what I was doing on the computer that she treated me with respect, and the best way I could think to repay that respect was to not be on the computer while she was talking.

But as a result, my notes are less detailed and much less accessible to me. I’ll need to spend some time keying them in.

Is this a common phenomenon? And how do you feel when you’re presenting to people while they are actively using laptops?

Recommended Reading

Here’s an extremely mixed bag of reads I’ve found worthwhile:

Career Stuff: I recently had to update my resume because I’ll be supervising our next VISTA.  While I was at it, I wish I’d seen this:

Avoid These Phrases to Keep Your Resume Relevant

Productivity: Since on a slow day I’m interrupted 25 times, I’m constantly looking for tips and tricks to get back on task and not have days escape from me.  This one fit my needs nicely:

Take 18 Minutes to Keep Your Days On Track

Social Change: I’m pretty aware that I’m a person who’s white working in a community of color.  In this post, Allison points toward a documentary she found worthwhile and has plenty of her own commentary about the importance of communities helping themselves.

Social Change and Being Black in America

On Attitude: Sometimes you need it.  You just have to be able to stand up for yourself and your work.  Chris Brogan does so briefly, strongly, and in his own words.  We all need to be able to do this in our own words.

Why I Use Affiliate Links When Reviewing Items

Humor: If you don’t read xkcd.com, you should.

Lease
Estimation

Woo Training Party!

I’ve been MIA because I’ve had a ton of planning to do both at work and in my personal life. It’s all going well – it just takes more energy than you’d think.

Just wanted to touch base and report that the Volunteer Training Party we had this evening was great!

I’m most proud of the way we stuck to our objectives when we planned it. We had a great many awesome ideas, and it felt like we threw out 95% of them because there just wasn’t time to include them, but the result was a training that didn’t try to do too much.

For the record, those objectives were to respond to the Volunteer Survey we sent out in the Spring, to give the teachers learning-center-related social time, and to use this to move forward with future trainings and efforts.

The Learning Center is closed this week, and I have some out of town visitors staying with me during my time off. I’m hoping to write some content during this time, but either way I’m not planning to post anything new until at least next week. Just so you know.