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Reflective Practitioner Portfolio, Jill Lake

Track: Regular CCT
May 17, 2016

Narrative

These are the classes I took in the CCT program, listed in the order I took them.

Critical Thinking for Business
This was the first course I took in the CCT program. I learned that I was generally a non-critical thinker. So, I began challenging my assumptions, examining my frames of reference, dwelling in methodological belief, and engaging in metacognition. The class was mind-opening. It also taught me more about working in groups.

Critical Thinking
What stuck with me from this course are methods of teaching critical thinking to children. I return to the gentle Socratic dialogue method, which is very effective. This course helped me with all of my other courses, and my synthesis project.

Collaboration and Organizational Change
One of the lasting lessons I learned from this course was to look at a system from the dance floor and from the balcony. Zooming in and zooming out are essential to understanding what's happening in an organization. I also learned to broadly define stakeholders. That advice was eye-opening, and incredibly helpful when I later took on my synthesis project.

Creative Thinking
I really enjoyed several of the exercises we did in the Creative Thinking class. In a word play exercise, I created a poem that I still love. I work with architects (who are very precise) at Parsons School of Design, I have children, and I have a very messy house. It is the opposite of the precise environments that the architects design and inhabit. The poem reveals that I love the mess, and that it spurs my creative process.

Lake – Wk 6 – Word Play.docx

I also completely enjoyed our assignment to tell a person's biography from the perspective of another person or a thing. I read Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss. I told the story of Marie Curie's life from the perspective of a cylinder of radium. I really loved that project. This is the narrative presentation I gave from the perspective of a cylinder of radium:

Lake_Wk7_Moment in Time Script.docx

I didn't like using Blackboard for this class, and I chafed at the requirement that we use an older version of Powerpoint for our final presentations. This was necessary because Blackboard was compatible only with the older version. I loved learning about Richard Feynman, Temple Grandin, and Rufus Wainwright for the final project.

But now, I see that in all situations, we're going to be faced with constraints. So, we need to use creative thinking to come up with solutions to problems that have physical constraints, such as the size of a land parcel, budget constraints, policy constraints, or time constraints. It was helpful, in the long run, to have to create my final project for Creative Thinking within the parameters of the capabilities of the older version of Powerpoint. This prepared me for my synthesis project. I identified both the Wix and the Weebly web developers as suitable tools for the website I planned to create. The superintendent and principal of the Garrison School asked me to use Weebly, because the school is creating other websites using Weebly. So, I accepted that constraint, and I learned how to utilize Weebly's many features.

Dialogue Processes
The Dialogue Processes class helped me to become a better listener and a coach. It also helped me to understand the four stages of dialogue, along with various formats for engaging groups in dialogue. I continue to go back to Bill Issacs', Peter Senge's, and Otto Scharmer's work. This class has proven to be very useful in my workplace. I have led dialogues following the model of the Public Conversations Project. An example is my final paper, in the exhibits below. In this course, I first considered the notion of generativity, and how a group could produce something together that they could not produce alone as individuals.

Philosophical Thought
Strangely, I had not studied Philosophy as an undergraduate. I found it wonderful to begin to "do" Philosophy. I found that I began to think about issues in new ways. For example, I found that I had never really thought deeply about why torture is reprehensible. I found that I agree with Henry Shue, who argues that all torture is inexcusable. Elaine Scarry asserts that permitting the infliction of physical pain through torture leads to destruction and the unmaking of the human world. Shue shares the same thesis as Scarry. He says that when we ban all torture, the catastrophe we avoid may not be a car bomb. Rather, the catastrophe we avoid is brutalizing civilization. This is my essay on torture:

Jill Lake Terrorism Paper.docx

My final paper for Philosophical Thought explored Philosophy, policing, and race in the United States. The paper is located below, in the exhibits area. That exploration led me to submit testimony to President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing in January 2015. The Task Force sought ideas from the public regarding community dialogues, racial reconciliation, and police leadership training. In part, I recommended that the Task Force consult with the Public Conversations Project, Reos Partners, and Peter Senge and Otto Scharmer of MIT, who are all experts in leading community dialogues regarding extremely contentious social issues. I had learned about them while taking the Dialogue Processes class. This is the testimony I submitted:

Lake - Task Force Recomendations - 1-8-15 (1).pdf


Reflective Practice
I created a reflective practice to support my time management and a job search. I learned a great deal about myself by tracking my time, and by observing my decisions and actions. I learned that I fooled myself into thinking that I had accomplished things, when in fact, I had only been busy. I saw that I needed to actually submit job applications, instead of continuing to look, and look, and look at job listings. The reflective practice I created had many components, and ultimately was not sustainable to maintain. However, I did maintain core practices during the next several semesters. These practices were critical to the success of my synthesis work:

• Daily journaling for reflection, including specific gratitude statements
• Exercising
• Relying on a support group of critical friends / learning partners
• Learning to say “no”—refraining from overcommitting myself
• Learning to say “yes” and taking a risk
• Getting up and moving during the work day to replenish my energy

My Plan for Practice is listed in the exhibits below.

Action Research for Change
I began serving on the Environmental Education Committee at my children's school in the spring of 2014. I identified my interest in getting children out into the school's forest. Later, the Hudson Highlands Land Trust proposed an offer to purchase a conservation agreement from the school district to preserve the school forest in perpetuity. I supported that proposal, and at that point, I realized that my synthesis project would have something to do with the Garrison School Forest.

For my Action Research project in spring 2015, I wrote a document for the Garrison community explaining the Land Trust proposal. I worked with Hudson Highlands Land Trust to make sure that the document was accurate. Then, I wrote a letter to land owner's whose property is adjacent to the School Forest. The grandson of the person who donated the school forest land to the school district added handwritten notes to the letters. We sent the letters and the informational document to the land owners and to the press.

Now, a year later, the school board is still considering the proposal. I will be joining the school board as of July 1, 2016 for a three-year term. So, I will have a vote on the proposal in the future.


Human Development
The Human Development class was wonderful. From it, I learned about how children learn. This information was very important to my synthesis project. I also learned about Erik Erikson's theory on human development. Specifically, I learned that generativity is important to happiness as an older person. This also connected with my synthesis work, and my decision to run for election to the school board in my community. The course also helped me to re-frame disappoint about my current job, and to look forward to new career opportunities. The course helped me to learn about my children, my marriage, and my own development. It was incredibly valuable. And, Sharon Lamb, the instructor, is a gem.

Research and Engagement Processes
The Garrison School launched a Forest Fridays program in the school forest in fall 2015. After the launch of Forest Fridays, I wondered what other obstacles might be preventing greater use of the school forest. I posed generative questions that I had learned to formulate in the CrCrTh 601 Creative Thinking course. How might we remove those obstacles, I wondered. How might we help to get students and teachers into the forest regularly? How might we retain the school forest in the future. I thought that perhaps the Garrison School’s teachers needed more information about how and what to teach outdoors. Perhaps the district also needed to better integrate the school forest into the school’s curriculum. So I decided to collect and contribute local, regional, national, and international resources to help teachers teach in the school forest. I recognized that the Forest Fridays initiative could be informed by research on place-based, outdoor, and environmental education; by research on how best to teach outdoors; and by research on outdoor activities that are developmentally appropriate for children at various ages. I also recognized the importance of learning about and sharing the impact of experiences in nature on children’s health, creativity, and resiliency.I saw the benefit of collecting resources on how to read a forest, citizen science projects, local history, local conservation history, applicable lesson plans, grant opportunities, and information on plants, animals, and weather. I saw that this research could be the focus of my synthesis project, and I decided to house this research in an Environmental Education website for the Garrison School.I collected research to inform the content and design of the website as the focus of my CrCrTh 692 Processes of Research & Engagement paper.

Synthesis of Theory and Practice Seminar
This is the home page of the Environmental Education website that I created for the Garrison School in Garrison, NY as my product for my synthesis project. I also wrote a paper.

The URL is: www.gufsee.org.

I created the website to provide the Garrison School's teachers with resources to help them teach in the school forest on Forest Fridays. The website’s audience also includes students, parents, and the greater community. The website presents lesson plans, guidelines on teaching outdoors, and information about the school’s environmental education programs. It offers a wealth of resources on animals, citizen science, climate change, geography, geology, the Hudson River, local conservation history, local folklore, nature’s benefits for children, local Revolutionary War history, trees and forests, and more. The website incorporates photographs, videos, audio recordings, maps, and illustrations. I wrote the paper for an audience of graduate students who are planning their thesis projects. The paper describes processes that I employed to create the website, including: action research, reflection, metacognition, and creative thinking. The paper also outlines the website’s intended purposes. The paper contains nine chapters: “Introduction,” “Orientation to the Location,” “The Situation,” “My Synthesis Project,” “Rationale for My Engagement,” “The Process,” “Taking Myself Seriously,” “Next Steps,” and “Conclusion.” It outlines nine goals for the synthesis project: to share resources to help the school’s teachers learn how to teach outdoors, to share examples of lessons that may be taught in the school forest, for teachers to use these resources and teach in the school forest regularly, for teachers to begin sharing stories about their experiences on the website’s Forest Fridays blog, for the website to play a part in persuading the school board to accept the HHLT proposal, to share stories of New York’s Hudson Highlands with the greater community, to use the website as a portfolio piece to assist in my job search, to identify my vocation through this project, and to assist future students in creating their own transformative synthesis projects.

Exhibits

Course name	Link to exhibit wikipage or file
Core Courses
Critical Thinking
Creative Thinking	Sara Kaplan and I worked as a tem on this final project. Lake_Wk13_Final Presentation.pptx
Philosophical Thought	Metacognitive Assignment Jill Lake - Metacognitive Assignment.docx Final Paper Lake - Philosophy and Policing.doc
Human Development, COUNSL 620	Final Paper. Discussion of human development theory related to interview with person over 70 years old. Jill Lake - Human Development Final Paper.doc
Electives
Critical Thinking in Business	Final Project. Aldi Case Study by Aderonke Adeyeye, Jill Lake, and Lauren LeGendre Aldi Case Study-Revised .docx
Collaboration & Organizational Change
Reflective Practice	Plan for Practice Jill Lake - Plan for Practice - CRCRTH 688.docx
Dialogue Processes	Final Project Jill Lake - Dialogue Processes Final Project.pdf
Required Research & Engagement Courses
Processes of Research & Engagement	Self-assessment in relation to 10+10 goals 692JLasmtJ22Dec15.docx
Action Research	Final Action Research Paper Jill Lake - Action Research Paper - 5-11-15.docx
Synthesis	Self-assessment in relation to 10+10 goals 694JL Exit Self Assessment.doc My synthesis project was composed of a paper and an Environmental Education website for the Garrison School in Garrison, New York.