Follow this blog!

Stop working and love your job.

Teaching is not a four letter word-so quit acting like it.

I want to teach forever. 

Do you?

Do you blog?

Challenge: Should you choose to accept it...


Blog with me.  One day a week.  Blog about your classroom.  About your daily life.  What did you like? What did you not like? What great resource did you find? What questions did you leave unanswered?  What color shoes did you wear on Wednesday? 


I have attempted many blogs.  My first was when I studied abroad with my best friend Canden.  We had a joint one.  I then made one of my own...lasted 7 entries. I've had about 3 in the last couple of years none of which I can stick with.  I've never been very good at holding my own feet to the fire-so will you help me?


I love education, and devote too much time to being the best educator I can be.  Dean Shareski wrote for the Huffington Post that he believes that blogging is crucial to creating practicing reflectors.  Even our new teacher evaluation system states that we must "actively participate through the use of self assessment, reflection, presentation of artifacts, and classroom demonstration(s)."  What better way to do this than put it on the web, have others look at it and help you reflect?  It's like Twitter but with way more than 140 characters.  Want to read Dean's blog? He has http://ideasorthoughts.org where he keeps his...ideas or thoughts...clever. 


What kind of great things have people gained from blogging?  George Couros documents how he got teacher's blogging.  How it has helped him reflect and inspire his teachers, and inspire him.  Just from hearing one idea for the classroom I get a little thrill...imagine what could happen when we have a little time to read what our coworkers are doing on Saturday morning and we get inspired too. 


I know, I know, I know...time.  It's of the essence.  We don't have enough of it, we can't take more of it and what we have left is precious.  However as Thoreau said

“I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, To put to rout all that was not life and not when I had come to die Discover that I had not lived.”

Replace live(d) with teach/taught, or inspire(d).  I want to go to school every day knowing that I have inspired, or taught someone something.  I want to do all I can to make sure that I have lived up to everything I set out to be.

The constant cynic in me will now counterpoint my Thoreau with Thoreau “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” If you do not feel like you have a blog worthy atmosphere, don't do it.  However from all the great things I've seen, and conversations I've heard in my short time in this position, I would like to think that we have all "lived" in our classrooms and collaboration should make us sit down and write. 

Blogs to follow to inspire you:
Dan Meyer-math guy, but all around educator
Meredith Stewart-SS MS and HS teacher, also taught ELA (LOCAL!)
Mrs. Chili-ELA Hilariousness.  Only teacher I don't know through Twitter but her blog is funny
Dean Shareski-Reckless Learner by trade
Sophie Germain-2nd year teacher who is all around hilarious
Sam Shah-not for the weak math hearted, but great use of tech integration and love of...life!
Jason Buell-note the name of the blog...discusses mostly standards based grading

AFL Training, or as I like to think of it, 7 hours of collaboration

Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision.  The ability to direct individual accomplishment toward organizational objectives.  It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results. ~Andrew Carnegie

A positive quote to start of a not so positive post...
I had a meeting from 9-4 today.  School day starts at 7 so I went to school before the meeting.  Being a teacher I never sat in a meeting from 9-4 that wasn't in sessions, or round robin, or related to math.  So if you can imagine...I was kind of not looking forward to it.  By kind of I mean not at all.  Sorry to the leaders-if you have some how found my blog, no offense to you, just sitting has never been my thing, listening has never been my thing and listening while sitting tends bore me.  Keep reading though, you may like the outcome...

So anyway, after being at school for 90 minutes where we had a teacher out, I had observations to complete and assessment "stuff" to figure out, I was driving to the meeting cursing at the county and running a "to-do" list in my head.  I figured I would sit in the back and complete my items and only semi listen to the meeting.  I arrived, pulled up a chair to an empty table and thought about getting to work. I was next to a table of two IF's that I had talked to before and decided to be social and sit with them...

BEST DECISION OF THE DAY!

Turns out they didn't mind being off task either.  But the screepy (scary and creepy) thing is that we were off task while being on task.  We collaborated all day long.  We discussed questions about our jobs, how we manage our school(s), what we can do to help each other, share resources, et-cet-er-a.  It was great.  We also learned about AFL, Assessment for Learning...

So what is AFL you ask?  What does it mean?  Where is it going?
Rick Stiggins is the godfather of AFL.  I'm not giving him too much credit, he knows how great he is, evident by the amount of times he quotes himself in his articles.  Why is that educators think so highly of themselves? Huh Sternberg?  Whatever, let me get back to my thoughts....

"We have reached a tipping point: We either change our assessment beliefs and act accordingly, or we doom struggling learners to inevitable failure" Rick Stiggins

Basically, AFL says that we will provide feedback for all assessments.  We cannot test, without providing meaningful, descriptive feedback.  My job is to provide the professional development and support for the teachers for them to provide the feedback.  Have you ever been a teacher?  Have you ever had someone say "AND I want you to do this..." or what about..."I would like you to take an hour and half for me to teach you something you know how to do, but I'm going to ask you to do it differently"...yeah. That's me now.  They LOVE me...

oh you didn't get that sarcasm? huh, apparently I didn't try hard enough.

What I want to do in this role, is not always I what should do, or what I get to do.  I do fully believe in Stiggin's and all's idea of AFL.  I have been using some form of it for a while.  Most teacher's do, but don't call it such, or don't have their mind wrapped around it fully.  It is a huge shift for some teachers and not all like changes.  It's funny how flexibility is synonymous with so many things about teaching, until it actually involves changing our classroom dynamics then we throw a temper tantrum bigger than a 5 year old.  Speaking of temper tantrums tomorrow is Thursday...wish me the best!