Catching up
Statement of fact: It’s almost August. Exactly one month from tomorrow I will begin my eighth year as a teacher. Needless to say, it’s somewhat hard to fathom. I have a lot of little bits and pieces to catch up on here before I can really start blogging in earnest again. I absolutely needed this little sabbatical from writing a lot, partly because I needed some serious cooldown and reflection time. As I previously hinted, I spent the last school year in my worst year as a teacher since I started teaching. My students challenged me in ways that I had not expected, especially since the year before that felt like my best year as a teacher, where I couldn’t do anything wrong. Fortunately, my students still showed progress when it came time for their IEP meetings, and most of the parents I met with seemed genuinely grateful for the hard work I did with their students this year. It provided a bit of cognitive dissonance about how I felt about the year and how the kids/parents felt about the year.
I probably haven’t shared as much on here because I feel like I’m sharing all the time. Back when I started this blog, I intended to regularly share links to interesting news stories and provide some commentary about it. What happened to that plan? Twitter, of course. It’s much easier and faster to share a story there, especially with my bit.ly bookmarklet. A lot more people will see a link I post on Twitter than ever read what I write here.
I also share pictures on Flickr every day. Since I got my dSLR for Christmas, I decided to undertake Project 365. 211 days down, 154 pictures to go. Trying to take a picture every day alternates between incredibly frustrating and simple. I’m learning a lot about my camera and how to take better pictures, even if I do phone it in* a good chunk of the time just to make sure I have a daily picture.
I’ve spent a good chunk of time this summer meeting people and learning. I went to NECC for a day and had a great lunch with a whole bunch of awesome Special Ed teachers and friends. I went to a training to learn about geocaching. I met up with Kevin Jarrett and Lisa Thumann a couple of times in New Jersey for an unconference and helped out some teachers new to the technology thing. I went to a Whole Brain Teaching session and really dug it.
Now that I’m a bit rested up, I can start planning for next year. I can also start to use this blog better as a means of thinking and reflecting. I have a bunch of different ideas for blog posts that have been rattling around in my head for the past month or so, and it’s time I got to work.
*Literally. I’ll take a picture on my iPhone, and then e-mail it in to Flickr. It’s a great way to try and get a picture up on the days when I won’t be at my computer. Earlier this month I went on vacation to Massachusetts, and I added a new picture every day to my photostream directly from my iPhone.
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