Mister Josh's Neighborhood
Reflection
How did I end up here?
Prior to enrolling at UNCG, I put a considerable amount of thought into the development of a YouTube channel that would teach violin and music education. I continuously came to the realization that this form of asynchronous music education was a huge undertaking. I made a few attempts to face the challenge, and every time I began, I realized the plan would continue to snowball out of control with problems within the scope for material that needed to be covered. The problems I faced continually created new problems, so I never knew where to start. This was debilitating. So, without realizing it, I used an integrative thinking approach to solve two problems that I currently had. First, I had never finished my degree and second, I wanted to go back to school to learn about social media marketing because it seemed this would help me find my path toward a successful launch, development strategies and more. In the process of attempting to enroll, I discovered that I could get a Social Media Marketing degree in 6 semesters including my transfer credits, but it was recommended by one of the Bryan Business school academic advisors to check out the BIPS program where I discovered I could finish in 3.5 semesters with the amount of transfer credits I was bringing along, which was appealing.
My first realization…
My whole life has been scattered with projects that have been started and left incomplete because of my inability to see how problems can be utilized to make great, new choices. My first eureka moment occurred during applied project management. The reason projects have always failed is because I knew I needed to begin, but I have always expected results and taken time to get the results that I wanted. In Applied Project Management, I began to see how short bursts of work toward small goals grant the ability for work to be done in the Agile mindset. Once a set of small goals is completed, the traditional model of project management can be attained by having a long-term objective, and though one may not keep the same overall end goal, progress is being made through prototypes and testing toward a final realization. This was transformational because I started to see that the end goal was always in a fog which is why I was never going to get there. Using a hybrid form of project management would afford the opportunity to get small achievements completed moving toward an end goal without the pressure of having the end goal be perfectly what I had envisioned, and without investing a year or more into a project before any work was ever done to test. That is, fail early and fail often which is my new personal motto, and a motto that I am passing to each student who comes to me to begin work on a new piece of music. Failing early removes the pressure to be perfect, grants testing process and prototyping, and allows for growth to understand errors as progress is made.
Intent to finish the Degree? vs. Do my very best and get the most out of this process?
It was my original intent to finish my degree, and I was not 100 percent certain that I knew what the BIPS program would afford, but I accepted the challenge due to the nature of the process and the shorter time span, and I am so glad I did.
The BIPS core curriculum has transformed my strategic and planning thinking, providing a wealth of knowledge and theory which I will continue to strive to implement into the project, Mr. Josh’s Neighborhood.
The course thinking has also been applicable in my private violin teaching as well as creating positive effective management of my family and personal life, and my working relationships with others considering people skills, encouragement of how others will work together and with me and the process for developing empathetic and leadership thinking that will serve me in whatever path I choose next.
These classes have also incited a desire to pursue more learning and skills in project management, problem solving, modeling systematic frameworks through design thinking, and how the program truly synthesized in the transformational understanding of integrative thinking.
Storytelling with Data
At first, I did not understand the direction of the classes and how they would synthesize over time. I just accepted the process and chose to work to attain the understanding each class would provide. When embarking on Storytelling with Data, I was unsure how I would do in the class. I had never embraced being able to analyze narrative through empirical data, but a major revelation occurred to me in the process of this class as I put the data for the final project. I had poured over the data for the National Teachers of Excellence project in the class and discovered that there was a solution that was hiding in the data. For days, I looked this over, and in the middle of the night, I slept on it and awoke realizing what I had missed and how the hiding solution was woven into the overall data set. This afforded some wonderful ways of thinking that I had never embarked upon before. I realized that stress has held me back in some situations because under duress, the answers cannot come to you as easily, and that with enough stewing, eventually a creative mind can process valuable solutions. Sleeping on it is a valuable and trustworthy exercise.
Ethical Business Leadership
I must take a moment to highlight a point taken from this class as it relates to myself and my personality. A tool that I have taken from this class is the emphasis that is placed on empathetic thinking. I have always viewed myself as an empath in the sense that I can experience what others are going through by listening to them and watching their body language in communicative processes. However, I always had the impression that this was not a strength. In fact, I always viewed it as a weakness which caused assumptions that might cloud my judgement for situations or problem solving. It was a relief to discover that empathy is a great business leadership skill. Not only is it useful and necessary, but there are strategies that one can use to employ empathy as a strength such as positive reactions during brainstorming sessions where one can utilize their own ideas paired with the experience and ideations of others to generate a better solution rather than bullishly thinking that my own idea is the best. In other words, in the past, I have sought to suppress empathy for the sake of strength and personal belief rather than listening to understand to generate better ideas.
Design & Systems Thinking
My highlight moment in D & S Thinking was when I heard the story of Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos asking the 5 Why’s to discover the root of a problem. It is so simple, yet not simplistic. Five questions can lead one to a solution. As I have walked through the class processes, this is where I began to ask “Who” Mr. Josh’s Neighborhood was going to be for. I began to ask “What” the purpose of the platform is. And in systems thinking, I began to discover “How” I could begin to tell the story that can influence new music students in an information, educational and entertaining way. The Stanford Model of Design thinking truly resonated with the previously acquired thinking for Agile Project Management, and I began to acquire a system of streamlined strategic development of Mr. Josh’s Neighborhood.
Integrative Thinking
In systems thinking, I had determined two models to work through for “Mister Josh’s Neighborhood”. The first model, which I call the Generalist Model is built upon an understanding that the program is a sketch-comedy based platform filled with story-telling, gameplay and character development in an edutainment format for the purpose of grabbing attention and building motivation. The second model is called the Specialist Model in which documentary educational content is used to mimic the private lesson learning environment to enhance depth of technical and musical understanding for daily praxis. Through building these models I was able to provide this Modular formatting content. In this model which fuses the two systemic models, the sketch show provides modular content which jumps to multiple locations such as the lesson studio, the concert hall, and the music theory classroom.
In Conclusion:
I have been particularly impressed and thankful for the efforts of my professors, Sarah Dunning, David Bull and Dr. Gregory Grieve, for their responsive and insightful efforts to help me along the way.
Their brief but encouraging reflection, advice, and the extra time they have spent to help direct me along the way through this program generates in me great amount of love and admiration for the educational institution that is UNCG and the shaping and learning I have received from this experience.
I wish I had done this years ago! I wish I had not written myself off as a high schooler and pursued this institution directly. I am thoroughly enjoying the Capstone projects, and I will be pushing hard to the finish line to achieve a workable project for the end goal.