Mayo’s Clinic: Pursuing the DEFs of Your Professional Development
28 July 2011By Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT
Diversity, exercise and focus are three areas that educators can capitalize on in the remaining summer months.
Last month, we discussed “Pursuing the ABCs of Your Professional Development.” They included Activities, Books and Conferences. This month, we will focus on the DEFs—Diversity, Exercise and Focus—other aspects of your professional development, something that we are all doing a bit of this summer.
D – Diversity
Since diversity is an increasingly important aspect of teaching—the diversity of students, the range of their backgrounds and skills, the variety of their learning styles—it is a concept that you probably think a lot about and work with in your daily teaching activities. Each of us has been involved in diversity workshops where we were reminded to recognize and honor the diversity of our students, a practice that we take seriously as educators.
Diversity can also have another meaning—the variety of things—and why not recognize its original meaning and ensure that your professional development includes a range of goals, activities, resources and persons? Have you thought about bringing variety to the things you consider for your professional development? You don’t have to just read books about your subject or about teaching. You can include reading novels that you seem drawn to or classics that you have never read, or the book chosen locally if you live in a One Book One Town region. I have found reading those books, even if I cannot attend the activities in the fall, to be a wonderful eye-opening activity.
You can also think about the movies you have not watched, the concerts you want to attend, the local plays that are worth considering and the galleries or museums that you have time to visit this summer. Check out your local paper and find one or two things to try.
E – Exercise
A different focus of your personal and professional development involves exercise—which can include your physical muscles or your intelligences. If you did not have time for physical exercise during the year, give yourself the space to do some now when the weather is warmer in the northern states and the range of options for exercise increases. Or try an exercise class, a three-month membership in a gym or fitness facility or a new physical activity. It may be a powerful way to reconnect with your body and your soul.
The other type of exercise is mental. In order to keep young and vital, we need to keep expanding our use of our brain and our various intelligences. As you may remember, Howard Gardner, professor of cognition and education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, developed the model of seven intelligences, including—bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, musical intelligence and spatial intelligence. If you think that you have one area that is not as fully developed as the other or one that you have neglected for some time, consider exercising that form of intelligence this summer. If you are not sure what they really are, you can obtain his answers to commonly asked questions about multiple intelligence by clicking here or you can consult his books. The two most relevant to this topic are his two books Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (Basic Books, 2006) and Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences for the 21st Century (Basic Books, 1999).
Expanding the intelligences that you exercise may be a wonderful way to broaden your learning experiences and strengthen your intellectual as well as your physical muscles.
F – Focus
One of the facts of our busy teaching lives is the quantity of demands that draw us into a wide range of activities and events and push us to multitask. Sometimes during the year it can be easy to lose awareness of all the things we need to do. For some of us, to-do lists or planners (electronic or paper) are essential in making sure we do everything on time and don’t forget anything. For others, the advent of social media and the flood of information from a variety of sources keep us a bit off center and always running to catch up.
In this situation, a great contribution to your professional development can be to make time to focus and center yourself. Whether that involves meditation or prayer, quiet time or journaling, fishing or farming, taking long walks or taking long trips, jogging or bicycling, gardening or golf, it does not matter what you do so long as it works for you. Take a minute and consider what activity—or lack of it—helps you to regain your focus on both your personal and professional growth.
Whatever you need to do to find that center again, give yourself the gift of honoring that activity. Taking the time during the summer and using the activities that work for you to center yourself and return focus to your life is a gift that you can give to yourself. Consider it and make the time. It can truly be the pause that refreshes.
Summary
Thank you for reading this column about facilitating your own professional development. Next month, we will discuss planning for the fall. If you have comments about your professional development or suggestions for others, send them to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., and I will include them in future Mayo’s Clinics.
Dr. Fred Mayo, CHE, CHT, is a clinical professor at New York University and a frequent presenter at CAFÉ events nationwide.