Miha Lee’s SLO Reflection #5
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Paper for Leadership
(Living by Chemistry)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF ASSIGNMENT
This assignment was for a grant proposal for a curriculum funding project from 610.
I proposed as a director a project in which a group of chemistry teachers develop a new
curriculum named ‘Living by Chemistry’.
CONNECTIONS TO THE SLO OF LEADERSHIP
Currently, I am just a member of Seoul Chemistry Teachers Association, but I
assumed my role as a director in the paper who make a plan, arrange actions, and host events
for the project. Put differently, I am a manager who facilitates the activities of a group of
teachers. However, in my paper I was not the president of the group who takes responsibility
as an obvious leader and not a research director, who in fact was a professor from a university.
I think of leadership as an ability that is needed for everybody who want to take a part in
change and make things better in their own area. In this paper, I tried to develop my
leadership to work for the on-going educational reform.
REFLECTION
The assignment made me think of the leadership. Do I have the leadership to be a
director of a program? What is a leadership? What should I do as a director?
Actually, when I was young, I imagined a leader who has a “charismatic” ability to
lead “unintelligent” people to achieve things better. From this view, I as a director should be
smarter than other teachers and should not make any mistakes in doing my jobs. However, as
a grown up adult, I know it is not true and should not be true.
I am reading a book about educational reform in which teachers’ roles in the reform
is discussed. I haven’t finished reading the book, but I learned that developing good
relationship by understanding the difficulties faced by the teachers and encouraging their
intrinsic motivation to actively participate in the project are the significant keys to success of
a project. Thus, my role in the project should be a facilitator who exerts informal leadership
by building close relationships with people involved.
Miha Lee’s SLO Reflection #5
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In the future, I want to be a leader who takes charge of developing a national
curriculum for high school chemistry. But I don’t want to control people with my power or
position. I want to encourage people to help each other in order to get their best out of
themselves.
In addition, to have leadership required for my dream, first I have to develop my vision about
chemistry education by building comprehensive knowledge about the philosophy of science
education. The CSUN master degree program has helped me build the knowledge. Especially,
Dr. Berry’s class was so informative for developing leadership.
In organizations, which is the more important influence on behavior – the system or
the individual? This is not an either/or question. What is critical is the relationship created
between the person and the system. That relationship will always be different and evoke
different potentialities. Thus, building fellowship, empowerment, and leader accessibility are
significant factors that make an organization healthy and successful. Listening,
communication, and facilitating groups are needed skills for today’s leadership. I learned
from writing the grant proposal paper that I need to develop those skills. Besides, I need more
experiences to develop leadership, so I will participate in many activities for education.