Running Head: FINAL REFLECTION 1

Final Reflection

Justin Gamache

EDDC 605

Concordia University

October 19, 2016

FINAL REFLECTION 2

The application of transformative learning is important in everyday life, though it is even

more important when used in leadership. Learning and leadership represent two rich lines of

research that help how people learn, and how people lead. Mezirow (1991) states

that “transformative learning involves reflectively transformative the beliefs, attitudes,

opinions, and emotional reactions that constitute our meaning schemes or transforming

our meaning perspectives” (p. 223).

When looking at myself and my leadership, I consider the object or the mission that I am

wishing to achieve and how I am going to achieve the mission to lead those who are following

my teachings. An example of leadership in my life would be standing in front of my choir and

band for the first time, I didn’t know what to do and how I was going to do it. My belief was

‘this is going to be easy’ and the emotional reaction was terrifying. After the first day leading the

choir and band, I reflected upon my belief and determined that it wasn’t going to be easy to lead

a group of students to sing and play their instruments. But it was going to be a good amount of

work solo and teamwork trying to get my students to be on the same page. Transforming my

learning and leadership in teaching music, and transforming their learning along with mine

helped create a new meaning of what direction we were going to take within the next few months

in class.

While understanding the value of transformative learning, my path in leadership “relied

on the relationship between educator and adult learner” and in this “kind of learning, it is like the

mentor trying to help a friend decide how to deal with a significant problem” (Mezirow, 1991, p.

223). The problem being discovering new meaning in what direction I was going to take the

choir and band in, and how we were going to utilize teamwork. I was able to lead my band and

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choir to be supportive, help each other when needed, and to provide positive feedback so that

everyone can feel good about moving forward.

How did I learn to lead and take my leadership to the next level? In describing my

transformational leadership, it took achieving significant reflections on my lesson plan and how

it would best meet the interests of my students so that they can have a better learning experience.

Leadership is morally purposeful and elevating, which means that leaders can, through deploying

their talents, choose purposes and visions that are based on their key values and create a social

infrastructure that can support who they are leading. I believed that I could make a difference,

and have transformed my leadership skills to allow a social structure to my classroom.

At the beginning of the trial run semester for my class, I set a guideline that determines

what a student must do to succeed in music and what wasn’t allowed. The one thing

that wasn’t allowed in class were cell phones, if you have ever attended a concert and someone’s

cell phone goes off continuously with the ring tone of multi-dimensional purposes of different

tones then you would know just how annoying it would be and consider rude (attending a concert

that person would be thrown out of the auditorium). But through this struggle, I had to keep

stopping rehearsals until the phone was shut off. Since the phone kept on ringing, I stopped

rehearsal one last time and we all took out our cell phones and played each other’s ring

tones. Identifying a general transformative logic (Mezirow, 1991, p.26), the knowing event in

my class and my perception to make a new lesson. Once we all played our ring tones, I then

made a new assignment each of us were to sing our ring tones. I gave the students five minutes to

listen to their ring tones again at the same as everyone else and then sing them.

It was my decision to take a negative and make a positive from the assignment with the

cell phones, and taking this decision in leadership I presently realize that “all transformative

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learning involves taking action to implement insights derived from critical reflection” (Mezirow,

1991, p. 225). In developing the developing of my leadership, critical thinking has become a

value of importance in my life and as a music teacher. Critical thinking is a reflection that

provides the opportunity to remove the self from the picture and look at the issue from a different

view than the view of your own. In the creation of the assignment with the cell phones, I

reflected on how I could solve the problem that was interrupting class. According to Mezirow

(1991), reflection is an intentional action leading to problem solving (p. 99). Autonomous and

Critical thinking are very important, in my leadership, and the job that I do currently always

provides the need of the team or self to think critically about the issues that affect the group or

self and then reflect on those issues in hopes to find a way to prevent a future mishap and cause a

positive effect.

I have always had a good sense of time in my leadership and maybe that is because I

teach music or just because I am always on time. I believe that time does fly, but time heals all

wounds. Time is essence. Yet there isn’t enough time in the world for what I would like to

achieve in my own leadership. I used to race against time, but time prevailed when I did. Now in

my leadership and self I take the time to breath, smell the roses, and live. I know what I am

doing is transforming my learning and guiding my leadership so that when the time comes in my

life my leadership can be passed down to others, and then they can be transformed to lead in the

same way. In my leadership and self-guiding journey, I believe that time makes us mortal and is

a ticking clock. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and years go by without every

knowing how much time has been lost, and “in order for us to move forward in time we must

leave something behind” (Interstellar, 2014). I’ll leave my leadership behind so that others will

have something to follow, a guide so that my students and anyone else who is accepting of my

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transformational learning journey can become leaders themselves so that they are able to pass

down their leadership to the world to that it can be transformed in positive learning. Leadership

is a transformational learning journey, all great leaders have a journey and story to tell. I am sure

time has a bigger journey to tell, because time goes on for infinity. Time has seen many great

leaders like Socrates, Albert Einstein, and Albert Borgmann who have transformed the field of

adult learning like Jack Mezirow.

The most important value to being a leader is having mentors to follow, and friends to

support the decisions you make in life. The friend is someone who is loyal and supportive, while

the mentor helps makes a sense of balance in transforming the “relationship between the

educator and the learner” (Mezirow, 1991, p. 223). I like to consider my student’s mentors to

my leadership because they are the ones who are continuously transforming my leadership so

that I could be as effective as possible in trying to transform their leadership. It is important to

my leadership and self that I “try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man

of value” (Einstein, 1879-1955).

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References

Einstein, A. (1879-1955). Quote. Retrieved October 19, 2016, from

http://www.quotesvalley.com/try-not-to-become-a-man-of-success-but-rather-try-to-

become-a-man-of-value-36/

Mezirow, J. (1991). Transformative dimensions of adult learning. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-

Bass.

Nolan, C. (2014). Interstellar. Retrieved on September 5, 2016 from:

http://www.interstellarmovie.net/