Do U C What I C

Yesterday I had the experience of presenting in a district that is very different from my own.  I am not going to go into the whole long story, but it was one of those times when I stood there thinking to myself…just stop talking….they are not in a place where they can hear this and utilize it…just stop.  I did my best to adapt on the fly and make some impact on the situation.  Then I packed up my laptop and hopped back in my minivan for the two hour drive home.  I love driving by myself sometimes. I listen to podcasts of presentations that I have missed, sometimes I mentally plan out my next big class project, and sometimes I just crank up the radio and sing out loud until my throat hurts.  All of these are healing times for me.  Yesterday, I spent the first leg of my trip going over all the possibilities of our impending building and grade level split.  It is a big stress for me, because our building is so great, and our principal is a visionary, leader, and most of all a friend.  It is one of those situations that will be an emotional upheaval on some level, no matter what happens.  I thought about how I wish this was not happening, and how I could help adjust and adapt after the split, and what if I lose my great teaching partner, or my computer room, or my (gulp) principal? 

Then I walked into my presentation site.

The second leg of my trip was a much different kind of reflection.  I prayed out loud for forgiveness….for being so self-absorbed and worrying about the little things.  Even if I teach in a closet next year, with no computers in my room, with total strangers, and (gulp) for another principal, it will be ok.  I have come so far, and sometimes I forget to look back…..yesterday, I looked back.  I love looking forward, having those pie in the sky conversations about where we will go.  But I need to remember to look back.

Just a quick post because it seems that I have once again somehow gotten into some sort of one sided verbal joust with one of my favorite bloggers.  It all started a couple weeks ago when I saw a twitter that at first read seemed a bit out of character for dwarlick.  I wanted to hear more about this thought, and so I muddled around with twitter for awhile, then realized that he could not see me, because he does not follow me.  So I let it go, and never really got to the bottom of that, no big deal.  So NOW it seems that I have somehow said something that was taken as criticism in his current post, and I really feel bad about that.  I was just thinking out loud, and I only really comment when I feel that what my brain is spitting out is worth exposing to the rest of the world.  I really didn’t meant to be a critic.  So I set out once again to find dwarlick, and apologize for any misconception of my ramblings.  I could email him, but I tend to think of that as “invasive” when I don’t really know the person.  (Except for Dembo on his B-Day) No chance of getting him on twitter-already explained that, hmmm…I could comment on his post, but I really don’t want to look like a dork…so I ask you- when something you comment on is perhaps taken the wrong way, do you see it as comment etiquette to comment again and explain?  Should I comment, or let it go?  If I don’t comment, do I risk blowing my photo opportunity at METC next month?  Is it bad to be critical when we are all trying to figure things out together? OK, these are all obviously rhetorical questions since I just linked the post here, and now it will trackback to his blog….well then, I guess this IS my apology….what would Miss Manners say about apologizing in a trackback?  Well, as I told my friend JW the other day, I have spent half my life with my foot in my mouth, so here we go again!

I have been spending the past month finding a balance- a center point at which I can maintain something that resembles a personal life, and still stay plugged in to my PLN, keep up with lesson plans, and continue to blog on a regular basis.

 Well….it didn’t happen.  Not because I don’t have time, not because I spend too much time on twitter (that’s for you BFF), and not because I am any busier than anyone else out there.  I think its me.  I am finding some things out about myself as a learner, a teacher, and a mom.  I thought I would take a few minutes to share these things with you.

First, I function in waves.  I can’t just spend 10 minutes reading blogs, checking twitter, and responding to posts.  I have to track back all the embedded links, think about the questions, jot notes about how I might utilize a new idea in my classroom.  I am like a camel who has to fill it’s hump really.  I get in these moods where I just want to suck up as much information as I can, and interact with others, share ideas, create projects.  I ride the learning wave until…I crash.  Either because I realize that my husband is starting to look at my laptop with green eyes of envy, and I fear I may find it smashed to bits next to my chair, OR because I realize that I have been “shooting from the hip” a bit too much in my classroom, and I have no grades entered for the quarter that ends tomorrow.  Is this a good thing?  Probably not.  Can I do anything about it?  I really don’t think so. 

I am not just like this about technology, I am like this about everything.  I get a new lesson idea, and I stay up all night working on it.  I can’t leave school until my desk is clean. I can’t just do some laundry, I have to do it all.  I can’t just watch what I eat, I have to count every gram of fat.  When I “turn off” I totally turn off and spend the whole day in my pj’s playing battleship with Tanner.  I can’t dip a toe into anything.  I have to jump in with my whole heart. 

I have decided that this is my blessing and my curse.  I am OK with that, and I will accept it.  So tell me, is balance really all it’s cracked up to be?  Should I be seeking medical help?  Does anyone else out there function like this?  Gosh, I hope so- I would hate to be the only unbalanced one out there!

So much for posting every day! Probably not the first wet-behind-the-ears blogger to fall off of that lofty pedastal. Still, what have I been doing? Where have I been for almost a month, while my blog sits collecting dust? Well, apparently I have done nothing noteworthy because had I anything to say, I would have been blogging about it I suppose. That got me thinking….I have really been absent from not only blogging, but from reading blogs, twittering, and SL. My whole social network has been on hold. But then, so has my teaching. I am in an educational funk. Why? I was not really sure until today. Some recent conversations, and this post by Colleen King helped me realize that I am unbalanced, and I need to fix that.

OK, those of you who know me personally already know I am unbalanced- but that is not what I am talking about right now, so stop laughing and listen up. I have stopped trusting my own instinct about what is right for kids. I have sold out. I have spent way too much time worrying about how my kids will do on the big test, and way too little time on everything else. I am going against my gut, and it has me wishing I was not teaching. I know in my heart that if I help them learn HOW to learn, they will be fine on the big test. Constructivism and inquiry are not counterproductive to test performance- I have had good results in the past. I know that there are some basic skills that I always have to throw into the mix. I just let the assessments take over this year.

There is no reason to go into the “why” because it will only keep me from moving forward. So, now that my dirty laundry is out there, my question is what should I do about it? I have a huge need to differentiate this year, as my student levels are all over the place. I have done well with that part of my plan, and teach almost nothing to the whole group. That is easy to do when you are assessing and re-teaching almost constantly. I have done a few tech integrated projects, but can’t seem to let go and just see where the kids will take it this year…is it because I feel they can’t? Maybe…but perhaps I am not giving them a chance to show me what they can do. Any words of wisdom? Have you ever had a year where you just felt your kids weren’t ready? My gut says they were born ready…. Should I keep doing what I am doing, or cut them loose?

This week, I decided to tie up some loose ends. The nature of my classroom creates many loose ends, and sometimes I just want them all to be tied up in a neat bow, and finished. I don’t know why- it doesn’t last long. It just makes me feel better I guess. So I went in determined to do nothing but tie, tie, tie. No sidebars, no interjecting personal stories to drive a point, just tie, tie, tie. Well, it was all going as planned…until journal share. Alex had written about a dream he had, and someone asked “what part of the brain does that come from, and how come I can’t remember mine?” We wrote that question down to add to the list of questions on my website…another loose end. During workshop I realized that several kids needed a refresher on states of matter so that they could finish their powerpoint project…small group time scheduled….another loose end. Then during choice time someone found moviemaker, and asked if I would show them how to use it….now he wants to do his matter project on moviemaker, and spends the next 20 minutes sketching ideas and firing questions at me….loose end. After school, a student emails me to ask whether she should get a pink or orange cast on her broken hand….so I post a blog survey for my kids, and decide we will take that data and use it to make bar graphs for math tomorrow. That will give me a chance to show them create-a graph, which we have not done yet this year. 2 more loose ends…hmmmm. So I think I ended the day with at least 5 more loose ends than I started with….it was a good day. I guess I should just let my loose ends go….because that’s when I see the most…..I see kids who are not afraid to ask questions, I see my instruction changing to meet student needs, I see curiousity, flexibility, and reality. I see loose ends. Ah well, I was never really a “bow” kinda gal anyway:)

Just a quick new blog to say that my current vice is watching Current TV while folding socks on Sundays.  You all have probably known about it for awhile since it has been around since 2005, but I just recently ran across it in my attempt to distract myself from sock matching.   I like it because it is almost totally viewer created content, with a huge variety of topics.  This morning I learned what it’s like to have a mom with cancer, found out what waterboarding was (yikes), and watched as several young Katrina survivors told stories about how life is for them now.  They also have viewers doing music and movie reviews, current google search trends, and random statistics about things like the 5 lowest paying jobs in America.  I guess it is sort of like CBS Sunday Morning for the 21st century junkie.  No story lasts more than a few minutes, which I suppose reflects the attention span of the current audience.  I do wonder who filters the content though…it’s privately funded cable, and they say on their website that Al Gore is somehow involved in it.  So I guess if you have issues with that, you might not want to watch…otherwise, take a look.  I have already gotten a few ideas that will somehow reflect into my teaching I am sure.  Hmm..Branson Elementary Current podcast perhaps?

This weekend I was checking and posting comments on my blogs, and I had two firsts.  My first spam comment on my student blog, and my first student with his own blog.  The first one was no big deal, just deleted it.  The second, however, got me thinking.  I was excited and scared at the same time.  I loved my job, and feared for my job at the same time.  Would I hug him, or scold him?  This one was going to be tricky.  I don’t want to crush the spirit of a young blogger after all.

My students are no strangers to blogging.  They comment on my class blog, start their own strands of conversation on my class blog, post to the library blog, and read and sometimes post on our principal’s blog.  This particular student also writes on a blog that the gifted teacher has created.  So should I be surprised that he went out there and made his own?  I guess not, but I am.  Why?  Because they are 8 for gosh sakes!  When I was 8, what was I doing?  Playing jacks, or reading a book that I DIDN’T get AR points for, most likely. Would I have been blogging if there were such a thing back then?  Maybe……Probably…..ok, YES!  But this is the part of teaching that gets scary for me, because whether or not he knew about blogging before I showed him,  I feel responsible for opening up this world to him, and I have to be sure that he is safe.  Do his parents know he has a blog?  Does he have his own email?  So, I call out the troops- alert all interested parties, and today my whole class had a presentation on internet safety- something that I had already done on a small scale, and a lesson that would have been taught by the library media specialist in the next few weeks….but we bumped it up a little because…..well, because I was freaked out, and my LMC lady loves me:) 

I am not sure if the internet safety lesson made me feel better, or worse.  They sure knew all about webkins, and facebooks, and how to make a fake email when you need it to get to the game you want to play!  YIKES!  Well, at least I know now what they know, and hopefully our talk today will make them think.  Tomorrow, my young blogger will have a little private session on blogging safety, we’ll clean up his blog, perhaps move it to edublogs, and then let him write- I see how this could be the start of something great….or not.  I guess that’s what experiential learning is all about, and I can always be a Wal-Mart greeter, right?

Spent some time chatting at K12 Night Falls session tonight, even though I have had very little time to listen to all of the great presentations.  I felt a bit of deja vu as the chat rolled by and the conversation suddenly sounded just like the one I had in the Fireside David Warlick chat.  Is it me?  Yes, principals need to be involved if technology is to work.  Yes, students know more than we do about technology.  Yes, teachers say they have no time to learn tech.  Yes, yes, and yes.  Same conversation- why?  I am trying to reflect and frame my online experiences, and maybe there were people in that chat room who have never heard that before, and needed to hear it.  Maybe those conversations need to happen all the time to keep people aware.  Is there this revolving door of educators where the technology doorman must continually repeat the conversation for those who just came in?  I think that may be partially true, but I am personally ready to move on to the “how” part of the work.  Now if anyone reads this, don’t take it the wrong way.  That conversation did occasionally dip in the direction of “how”.  Maybe I am just writing this as a personal message to myself to say “get going with it already!”

That said, I can say that I am now officially obsessed with the idea of building bridges.  I have decided that the first part of it might have absolutely nothing to do with technology.  I have a pretty good rapport with teachers in my building, but if I want them to jump over this gap, and into the unknown, that rapport is not good enough.  They have to respect the way I teach, they have to respect the way I professionally interact with peers, they have to trust me.  So today, I broke bread (shared sushi actually) with some colleagues that I don’t normally hang out with.  The principal and his family went too, and we barely talked about school, and I never once used the words twitter, blog, or wiki.  I learned that my principal is left handed, and he did his student teaching in Japan.  I learned that someone I thought was a risk-taker will only eat ranch dressing on her salad.  We shared wedding plan updates, new house stories, and halloween preparation tips.  We connected on a non-school level.  Do you see how important this can be? I see….

Day one of the new blog, and I am still trying to figure out what I might do with it.  My newest idea is to document the next 365 days of my growth and learning-one new thing every day.  Not a new idea, but a stretch for me.

So here is day one.  Today, I sat in a United Streaming workshop.  Not so new to me, but new to others in the room.  I spent the first few minutes spinning my wheels, my feet firmly planted in the basics along with the other participants…and then I stretched…across the gap….and twittered.  “Anyone out there have some great ideas I can share about United Streaming? ”  Sure enough, the ideas started coming and I was the bridge between my new and expanding social network, and the 5 other people in that workshop.  I absorbed, learned, and then shared small bites with the group.  What did I see?  Learning on many levels- I got new ideas about editing US video and having students create voice over to show understanding of content, and other participants learned how to advance search and visited the DEN website for the first time.  I stretched, the network grew, and the gap got a little smaller.  Thanks Lori A. for sharing, and thanks Shelly for letting me bring a bit of chaos to your workshop!  I needed a stretch today.

I know, I know….I don’t need anything else to keep up with- BUT- I have learned so much new stuff recently, and I just need a place to keep it all, to play with it, to see how it works.  I don’t want to put it on my student blog, so I have decided to dive into my own professional blog and see what happens.  I can’t imagine that I will have anything earth shattering to say here, but a recent post has me thinking about how I can help bridge the gap between the techies and the newbies-  Do you see what I see?  Do you see the potential?  Do you see the gap?  Do you see the energy? I see it…now what will I do with it?  What will you do with it?  We’ll see…..