Today we assembled as a faculty to kick-off the 2008-2009 academic year. This is an exciting day, especially for those of us who work most of the year, as old faculty return with tales of adventures from the previous ten weeks and we welcome in the new members of the teaching community at school.
Like many schools, we begin the year highlighting the themes and topics that we will address for the upcoming year. Last year, the school created a new strategic plan which outlined the areas of exploration for us for the upcoming year.
There are three areas of focus for us in the upcoming year. They are Diversity, Environmental Sustainability, and Service Learning. This is in addition to the technology agenda, of trying to create a cadre of teachers who will seed a professional learning community to talk and communicate about best practices, as we determine our future direction and whether we implement a 1:1 program.
What was interesting while listening to the various presentations from each of the leaders spearheading the initiatives was that our challenge is going to be how we progress in each of these areas, since we will be competing for attention and energy above and beyond the normal day-to-day classroom experiences. Many of the groups, including my technology vision, are going to ask teachers to meet, discuss, and develop priorities and action plans to further the initiative. It may be dangerous and we may be working at opposition to each other, which may cause neither of the initiatives to gain traction and momentum.
What is interesting is that the solutions, engaging students to take ownership, gathering buy-in from a diverse constituent base, develop curriculum that is more problem-based in nature, could be complimentary and brought together under a single umbrella.
Rather than being four different initiatives, we should try to consolidate our efforts into a single plan for 21st Century Learning. This way, we can combine efforts. There is no reason that they Environmental Sustainability project create service learning projects which utilize technology tools to create spaces for collaboration, communication, and allow for different groups to connect both synchronously and asynchronously to provide a wider group of diverse individuals to challenge and expand our assumptions, making the wisdom of the group greater than that of one part.
Instead of competing, we should consolidate efforts, so that each project can utilize the strengths of the complimentary other priorities while maintaining its unique identity.
That is our school’s challenge for the year, how to create a community and culture that is complimentary and builds cooperatively rather than compete against each other for the two most precious commodities for teachers, energy and attention.
This morning, I submitted my Google Teacher Academy application. The application process was fairly straight forward, with the exception of the need to create a one minute video on one of the following topics, either Motivation and Learning or Classroom Innovation.
This was the daunting part of the task, especially since I on August 11th, which coincided with the back to school rush. I had two weeks to figure out what my message should be, while at the same time I was having to create the variety of new accounts for each of the six virtual componenets of our North Shore community. What was the message I wanted to share and how could I make my presentation “sticky” enough to make others remember it, since the Academy is selecting only 50 individuals for this opportunity. There are a number of brilliant educators within a 90 minute commute of Chicago, so I know the competition will be stiff.
While riding my bike to work on Friday, I determined what my message should be. Influenced by our Middle School faculty summer reading of The World Is Flat, along the thoughts molded by the three most influencial books that I read this summer, Brain Rules, Here Comes Everybody, and Disrupting Class, I was able to shape a message which I am proud of, given two weeks to create the message.
Here is my message. I have my fingers crossed that the video and my application are worthy enough of an invitation to the Google Teachers Academy. Only time will tell.
It has been six weeks since I have posted my last reflective post. During those six weeks, I have attended NECC, the Laptop Institute at the Laussanne Collegiate School in Memphis, and a workshop given by Darren Kuropatwa at the Mary Institute and St. Louis Country Day School. At the end of these travels, I needed to back away from the immediacy of Twitter and time I need to create a post to spend both me time and family time.
I have been busy getting ready for the challenges of the upcoming school year. Over the next few weeks, it will become apparent what my two major projects, the ying and the yang, are for the upcoming year. After having the opportunity of meeting with our new faculty and spending more significant time with our new Middle School faculty, I am really excited about the possibilities for the upcoming year. Our new, younger teachers are coming into the school with skills and experiences that are deeper than in previous years. Many of them already have had experience with collaborative and visualization tools, blogs, Google Earth, and Google Sketchup. At my lunchtime conversations, the ideas are already beginning to flow fast and furiously. I know that I will have to be nimble to keep riding the surge.
I look forward to sharing our stories, my thoughts, and the obstacles that we encounter along the way during the upcoming year. I am looking forward to the wild ride.
