Day 2: Thurs, June 16th

Where to start? What a wonderful day. I'm tired in the best way possible (and not over-tired). I don't want my text to be too dense, so I'll try to use bullets. And I'll leave out some things, like how good breakfast was or how nice the hotel is or how friendly everyone is. There's 21 people in our "cadre", by the way, from all over the US.

1. Finished icebreaker activity from last night, where each person explains their drawing. Most drawings depicted the sun, diversity, smiley faces, people, community, self, the world, lifting people up and each 1: teach 1.
2. Series of welcome speeches. "The NEA building is a candy-bowl of resources."
3. Brainstormed, then wrote a list of behavioral norms to follow, e.g. acknowledge diversity and be willing to learn from it; keep a positive and flexible attitude; respect each others' styles.
4. Desert Survival Situation (rank 15 items to survive in the hot desert): excellent group activity which teaches that "group-think" is far better than one individual's brain. For example, I insisted upon salt tablets & other items (gun, book on wildlife) that would have killed my group. Thank God, I didn't argue and in the end, as a group, we won the assignment by choosing the best items (e.g. pocket knife, topcoat, mirror, water, flashlight, etcetera).
5. Tour of the building- about 550 employees, 8 stories high, 19 conference rooms, some with high-tech gadgets, big place! It's your building, PTFA members!
6. Emerging Leaders Academy (ELA) will continue over 9 months. Therefore, our leader, Phadra gave us an assignment. We need to pick a "front team" of 5 people (out of 21) to go with Phadra to a planning and contract-writing/signing in (probably) California this October. Once the "front team" works out the logistics, we will all go help the community college (or univ) organize and plan prof development activities. Phadra won't tell us exactly how the "front team" needs to plan the "field work"; we have to pick a team and advice them of their role as the "front team".
7. We used a little time to develop a list of the criteria needed for our "front team". It consisted of things such as; experience managing people, tech skills, able to delegate tasks.
8. Fantastic speaker: The Vanishing Latino Male in Higher Education by Luis Ponjuan Ph.D. (univ of Florida / college of edu) .
9. Thomas-Kilman Conflict Mode Instrument: there are five different ways to respond to conflict ranging from low-stakes to high-stakes, and along a continuum (each) of cooperativeness and assertiveness. The five modes are: accomodating, avoiding,m compromising, collaborating and competing. The trick is learning which mode to use; in other words, different situations call for different modes. For example, it's okay to avoid conflict in low-stakes situations.
10. DiSC Classic 2.0: a behavioral assessment to help you relate to and/or manage people. Sort of like the MMPI, the DiSC maps out 4 areas: dominance, influence, conscientious, and steadiness. Most of my cadre scored high in "influence". We are outgoing, motivational, optomistic and social. The best thing about this tool is that we learned what we need from others; what is missing in our own personality. For example, "dominance" people need others who weight pros & cons, calculate risks, use caution, research facts and deliberate before deciding.
11. Dinner at Dekum Ethiopian Resturant, located on the "U" Street Corridor, which reminds me of trendy NW 21st Avenue in Portland. Afterwards, a long walk back to hotel (~20 blocks), chatting and looking at the interesting architecture.

More news tomorrow. Jennifer