Activity 5: Professional connection map

Activity 5: Professional connection map

Create a blog post where you draw a map which demonstrates your current and potential professional connections. Based on the map, make goal(s) for extending your professional connections. 

What other professional communities intersect with or lie at the borders of your own profession? 

I have use the dark green colour to represent my own professional community, i.e the BOT, Senior leadership, students and WIS staff. reaching out from each of these areas is a light blue. The light blue represents intersects that are already in place. The green and light blue therefore have already made connections to my professional community in the recent years. The red for parents represents an interaction which will often bypass the other connections if needed but initially is linked o the student for example in the case of a Child youth and family referral or a hospital visit etc.  The recent light green and yellow represent the new additions to the School professional community as they have just approached us in the last year to partner with them. The ministry of Health is in dark blue as a potential connection to our school as we have had significant support shown recently for programmes for dealing with Rheumatic fever within our school. Board member and Senior Leader in the school have not interacted with the Ministry of Health directly as compared with the other ministries. 

What impact do these communities have on your practice and professional community?

One of the main impacts by this community on my practice, is in the way I have to share and lead new projects because of the large scale of the many different interactions and intersects of the various groups. For example when developing the action for PB4L I created a working smarter matrix which I have presented along with an action plan in the previous posts - which shows the many different ways their work needs to be prioritized with the school. The BOT as another example as changed its policy review and workplan in order to effectively govern the schools operational managers i.e the Principal which was introduced by the LSM and suggested in the recent ERO review. 

What are or what would be the benefits and challenges of working in a more interdisciplinary environment?

One of the biggest benefits of interdisciplinary environment is that it reduces the chances of students being left behind or falling through the cracks. It also makes it difficult though to keep the vision aligned when some groups are didactically opposed to the work we might be doing to improve our community of practice. An example of this is changes made by the Ministry of Education through IES which was not accepted by many schools to actually improve learning outcomes. However as this map shows the fact that we have a community already in place than we can spend the many millions of dollars allocated for IES to more evidence based approaches.