Hello, Old Friend

Two things that have played a big role in my life are music and writing, whether it be the actual act of writing or reading the writing of others. My dad turned me on to John Lennon when I was a kid, and I mean John Lennon, without the Beatles. John Lennon once sang, "life is just what happens to you while you are busy making other plans" and this lyric has resonated with me for quite a while in my adult life even though I first heard it when I was just a young kid.

We have all had the experience of having the best intentions of doing something for someone or getting in touch with someone with whom we haven't found time to touch base with in a long time. In the past six years, this lyric has rung true for me more often than I would like to admit. During this short time I have: been a middle school English teacher and took on the role of the department chair; moved from the middle school to be a high school English teacher where I learned even more about myself as an educator and again took on the role of department chair; entered into the next phase of my professional career and enrolled in grad school for the second time; studied educational leadership and earned two administrative certificates; interned as a building administrator and worked as an administrator in the area of curriculum and instruction; took on a new role as an adjunct professor in a teacher education program at Niagara University; and left a district and its students and teachers that I loved very much for 14 years to become an administrator in a district with which, thankfully, I have had some familiarity. It was a sad day in my life to leave such a place, but it was definitely the best move I have made professionally in a long, long time. My former district and its leaders helped to prepare me for the position I have today, Director of Curriculum and Instruction, and I am so thankful for the experiences I have had there that I would not know where to begin to describe it.

So, during this period when I had plans and good intentions of doing meaningful things for others but my life was busy happening in between, I wish I had taken the time to do many other things. At the top of the list is, of course, to spend more quality time with my family, specifically my grandmother who just celebrated her 90th birthday. My sister, I joke, has earned her get-into-Heaven-free card because she has taken time out of her busy life as a local merchant to take Gram to the doctor and run errands or just plain visit with her. During these times with Gram, my sister has learned some of the more intimate details of her life that I have never learned. Although I am glad to learn about them second-hand, it does not replace the experience of learning about them through my grandmother herself. Although not the warmest or most outgoing person while I was a young and impressionable kid, my gram has many life experiences I would love to learn about and be able to share with others in my life.

Another thing I had always loved, but found little time to devote to while my life was busy happening these last few years, is writing. As a kid, I loved to read; books have always had the power to take me to places I have never been and to experience things I was unable to experience in real life. And when I was kid in ninth grade, I found my poetic side; I wrote poems nearly every day and continued to do so for most of my high school years. Poetry and writing helped me to express myself in ways that a young teenager finds hard to do in everyday life. I still have a weathered notebook full of poems and the beginnings of stories I attempted to write back then. It was cathartic. And you know what, it still is today. As a teacher, a few years back, I began taking time to reflect in writing each week about my practices; I wrote about what went well, what didn't, what I wanted to change, what I wanted to keep, what felt good for me, and what I know felt for good for kids. In this blog, I have continued that practice and I am thankful for my educator friends for inspiring me to establish this space to do so.

Thank God my life is not so busy now that I found the perfect job for me and I have taken the time again to WRITE. This blog is the place I come to when my brain is swirling with ideas about my practice and about life in general. And it is here that I want to take the time to thank my family for helping me to become the person I am today and to thank those friends and mentors who have helped me to grow in ways I never thought possible. If you are reading this blog because you fall into one of those categories, THANK YOU for being in my life. And if you are reading this blog because you too want to grow as person or a professional, I challenge you to take the time to write about your life experiences and share them with others. You may not think that what you have to say is important, but, speaking from experience, your writing can have a transformative effect on others.

So, here it is, some advice: Don't get bogged down in the minute details of everyday life. Take time to reflect and share what your life with others has brought you. Just BLOG it!

How TRANSPARENT are you?

Hello, friends. I know that I have started my first few blogs with mentioning my Twitter network of educators, and at the risk of sounding redundant (a writer's sure-fire no-no) I must do the same again. As a result of this social networking tool, I have been privy to Transparency in its finest form in the past few weeks. My Twitterverse consists of staff developers, administrators, teachers, and teacher coaches who are brave and willing enough to be as transparent as possible in order to elicit meaningful feedback from other educators and content experts to improve their instruction and leadership in the best interest of both teachers and the profession and their students as well. As difficult and scary as it may be to put yourself out there, I believe that the single best way to improve your instruction is through eliciting feedback from your peers. This is, of course, the guiding tenet of a Professional Learning Community, which I desperately want to facilitate in my new role as a director of curriculum and instruction. Gratefully, I am fortunate enough to have colleagues to show me the way; educators whom I can thankfully also call friends, that are willing to grow professionally and are not only brave enough to publicly share what they do in their daily practice but who also beg for and welcome feedback from others frequently rather than wait for that "official" APPR to reflect on their practice.

How transparent are you? The colleagues and friends I reference are out there, and I mean really out there, on the world wide web, doing things like posting tweets on Twitter and links on wikispaces describing their experiences and eliciting immediate responses to their practice. With a simple tool like those aforementioned they post a link and receive nearly instantaneous responses from other experienced practitioners "in the trenches" who long, just as much as they do, to improve practice and gain ideas for how to apply theory to real-world practice in ways that present the best benefits to kids.

There is much discussion in the realm of education about this notion of transparency. Some key questions surrounding this notion include: How can we KNOW that any approach or strategy we employ truly works? How can the whole sector benefit from particular instances of good practice? What are the elements or components of good and effective practice? What outcomes do good and effective practice produce? Within what contexts do these good and effective practices exist? and How do we remain objective in providing meaningful feedback to those who elicit our reactions, thoughts, and ideas about our practice without being overly critical?

I don't have the answers to these questions. However, networking with the right people who have like desires to find these answers and be reflective practitioners has provided me with opportunities to begin to find the answers. If we truly are life-long learners who are dedicated to and passionate about improving what we do for kids, may we all be brave and willing enough to be transparent and share what we do with others in the best interest of our students and teachers.

Lead or Get Out of the Way

On a lazy and chilly Sunday morning in November, I have finally decided to join the pack of educators who are blogging in cyberspace. Although I read quite a few educator blogs, I have never written one myself. Today, I have decided to lead or get out of the way. Being a former secondary English teacher, I am a writer at heart and a lover of reading. Blogging seems the next natural step for me and I have been considering it for quite some time, but have been a bit nervous about putting myself out there. I am very opinionated and passionate about this all important profession and I have surrounded myself with like-minded people both in person and in cyberspace. I take the time to network with people who are also dedicated to and passionate about children, teaching, and learning. Thanks to Twitter, my network keeps growing. If you don't know about the power of Twitter, let me tell you that it is a fantastic resource that allows you to follow other educators and receive almost constant links to other important and very cool resources, but you have to follow the right people in order to have it be such a powerful resource for you. I am thankful for all of my Twitter friends.

Over the course of the weekend, I have read blogs on formative assessments, blogs encouraging others to blog, blogs on Sarah Palin and her wardrobe controversy, blogs on Barack Obama being a leader who is using web 2.0 tools, and blogs on collecting classroom assessment data and what to do with it once it's collected. I believe in the power of blogging both for personal growth and for classroom use. However, I am sad that too many teachers are afraid to use such classroom resources. It's hard to take that risk and try something new, but there's something about the uncertainty of technology that really scares the pants off of some teachers. There are so many web 2.0 tools out there that are not being used fully by those in education and, being in my current position of Director of Curriculum and Instruction, I completely understand that it is in my power to provide training for teachers so that these tools can be used to engage kids today. Considering that kids are native digital learners and adults are not, and thanks to a Twitter post by a friend, I have been thinking a lot about using kids to facilitate some of that professional development training. After all, who do we turn to in our classrooms when technology fails us? Kids.

Think about what this would mean in the scheme of developing a true professional learning community in your school...teachers, students, and school leaders teaching and learning together could develop into something really powerful for all of us. Imagine empowering students to teach their teachers what they are capable of in a web 2.0 world. Imagine students truly taking ownership of their own learning and imagine how they could create their own ideas for differentiating by process, choice, and product. Engaging and motivating students would no longer be such an obstacle, especially in secondary schools. Keeping up with the fast-paced world of changing technology is and would continue to be an obstacle though. However, I like that this latter obstacle also has potential to create life-long learners out of all us.

This is the challenge I am facing. I must find ways to inspire teachers to let go of their "old school" ways and walk with their students into the 21st Century. It's not easy to let go of how you've "always done it;" I know that. But I believe that if we allow students to show us what they are truly capable of in this day and age, teachers may begin to see the potential that's out there awaiting them. This I know: every time I have allowed students to take an idea and run with it on their own, in their own way, they have surprised me every time with what they are capable of.