News from the Central 1 Region
Steven Shadel, Central 1 Regional Director
Winter 2019/2020

Reflections, on, well, reflecting…

December is always a great time of year to reflect on both my personal and professional journey.
There are a few questions that typically go through my mind as I journal at the end of each calendar year…

  • Have I met my goals for the year?
  • Have I grown as I anticipated this year?
  • What advice do I think my 10 years older version of myself would give to me today?

Reflection is key as we become better leaders, partners, individuals and citizens. I encourage you to find some time as life slows down this month to reflect on the past year, semester, month or week to think about the following questions.

  • What can I celebrate?
  • How have you grown?
  • What am I going to improve?

I feel that it is also important to be honest with my team around what I am working on, where I have grown and even where I have failed! Reflection is an essential component of our work in becoming better teachers, instructional leaders and supportive people. How can we expect our teams to reflect and grow if we don’t do it ourselves?

Reflection doesn’t come easy to me, so I have been utilizing a tool called the Five Minute Journal. The structure of the Five Minute Journal really helps me scaffold my thoughts!

Updates in our region:

Team Leaders – I am in need of a team leader for Ohio and Indiana. If you are interested please contact me. I started volunteering in NCSM as a team leader, it is a great way to get plugged in as an advocate for your state.

Annual Conference – Many of us learned about NCSM because we had a mentor push us to grow professionally. I am forever indebted that my mentor pushed me to attend my first NCSM conference 8 years ago. Who could you be a mentor for this year? I encourage you to have a one on one conversation with a teacher leader, coach or administrator that would benefit from our amazing conference. Plus… the annual conference is only in our region every 8ish years!