So I'm sitting here, one unit further down the road than I wanted to be when I began this process and I'm ruminating on the three big Ps.
Procrastination-Allow me a brief pity party. Life is hard for the modern classroom teacher. I'm currently working on this class, finishing up an educational research class, implementing an action research project on vocabulary retention, serving as a member of an advisory committee that is helping our school move into Standards Based Grading and Reporting, serving as the head of department, administering common assessments to collect data to inform our instruction, teaching my classes (Oh yeah, that) and enjoying the company of my four-month-old. I've never been good at long-term projects that span a long time (which is one of my concerns about distance education and independently driven educational programs, incidentally). Nonetheless, it's crunch time, so pity party suspended.
Pessimism-My last blog post for EDC 603 focused on my future as a tech user/integrator. It had a bit of a pessimistic tone, I have to confess. Since then, and during the time that I should have been writing this post, I've done a lot of thinking and even more reading. My big take away was that in order to truly use transformative education in schools, the whole model of what we consider to be school needs to be disrupted. That, combined with my unreasonably high expectations of myself have held me back from this project. The voice in my head keeps telling me that if I had the answers, I would be implementing them in my classroom, writing articles, blogs, and books about them and selling myself as the newest guru in the world of tech integration.
PLNs-I've been lazy about building my Personal Learning Network due to several factors. The first is time. With everything I mentioned in the first section, I can't justify the time it would take to build my online "brand" via Twitter, the web, etc. While I appreciate the efforts of the COETAIL program to help us make connections and build a network of technology minded educators, I find that my blog is still not well-read, nor have the basic connections I've made so far been long-lasting. My plan now is to email colleagues and friends that are also language teachers and invite them to monitor my progress and chime in via this blog. Only time (and there isn't much of it) will tell if I can build my PLN. I feel like my best PLN has been in the COETAIL classroom when a group of teachers from my school is gathered around a table, building off of each other and collectively getting excited about transformation. Now that I'm back in my classroom and I'm alone (with 7 billion people on the other side of this monitor), it's harder to make those connections.
Procrastination-Allow me a brief pity party. Life is hard for the modern classroom teacher. I'm currently working on this class, finishing up an educational research class, implementing an action research project on vocabulary retention, serving as a member of an advisory committee that is helping our school move into Standards Based Grading and Reporting, serving as the head of department, administering common assessments to collect data to inform our instruction, teaching my classes (Oh yeah, that) and enjoying the company of my four-month-old. I've never been good at long-term projects that span a long time (which is one of my concerns about distance education and independently driven educational programs, incidentally). Nonetheless, it's crunch time, so pity party suspended.
Pessimism-My last blog post for EDC 603 focused on my future as a tech user/integrator. It had a bit of a pessimistic tone, I have to confess. Since then, and during the time that I should have been writing this post, I've done a lot of thinking and even more reading. My big take away was that in order to truly use transformative education in schools, the whole model of what we consider to be school needs to be disrupted. That, combined with my unreasonably high expectations of myself have held me back from this project. The voice in my head keeps telling me that if I had the answers, I would be implementing them in my classroom, writing articles, blogs, and books about them and selling myself as the newest guru in the world of tech integration.
PLNs-I've been lazy about building my Personal Learning Network due to several factors. The first is time. With everything I mentioned in the first section, I can't justify the time it would take to build my online "brand" via Twitter, the web, etc. While I appreciate the efforts of the COETAIL program to help us make connections and build a network of technology minded educators, I find that my blog is still not well-read, nor have the basic connections I've made so far been long-lasting. My plan now is to email colleagues and friends that are also language teachers and invite them to monitor my progress and chime in via this blog. Only time (and there isn't much of it) will tell if I can build my PLN. I feel like my best PLN has been in the COETAIL classroom when a group of teachers from my school is gathered around a table, building off of each other and collectively getting excited about transformation. Now that I'm back in my classroom and I'm alone (with 7 billion people on the other side of this monitor), it's harder to make those connections.
I think we put a lot of pressure on ourselves and become our own biggest critic. You are doing a lot and I don't think that you can dismiss the very strong PLN you have within our school. the connections you make via the committees you serve on and the classes you take are all very important. PLN via twitter is only a portion of the possibilities of a PLN but not the end all!!! I am happy to include you as a member of my PLN.
ReplyDeleteJason, you truly have a lot on your plate right now and everyone understands. I couldn't agree with you more about how the entire model needs to be disrupted. I am honestly scared/nervous to lead it and I am not sure who is strong enough to do it. This year has been hard to make the shifts we are currently making. Imagine the backlash from the types of shifts we are discusisng in class. I don't know if any of us have all the answers, but we seem to all agree that the shift is happening. As far as your PLN, it will grow when you are ready for it to grow. You are on the right track and the changes you are making in your department and your classroom are on track, procrastination and pessimism continue to propel you forward whether you realize it or not.
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