Teachers' Convention: Day 2

It is together... TOGETHER that we prevail!!

Another Convention has come and gone and I can honestly say that I have a greater desire to reflect upon the things that I have learned over the past few days.  This is not always easily done as the majority of sessions that I have been to don't do much beyond than share a positive and energizing message.  Now this isn't to say that they have been empty or a waste of time, but I've also been in too many situations where I've thought something was cool and quickly forgot about it as I went on with my day.  The need to act is probably my main responsibility as a conference participant.  presenters and speakers have done their job, now I need to so something with what they've shared.

As a quick follow-up from yesterday, and thanks to a suggestion from George Couros, I have now listed the 11 points of the Teaching Quality Standard on the side of my blog.  When I post, I will be making some sort of connection to what I'm expected to be as a teacher instead of just cobbling together a few thoughts that just might warrant a little bit of discussion.  It's my hope that as I am more involved as tying connecting my thoughts to my own professional development, blogging will be more meaningful for myself.

So.  What did I do today?

The day started off with an opportunity to gather with other teachers to build upon our early work with Project Based Learning.  After taking a few minutes to introduce ourselves and explain the projects that we worked with, we were given the morning to break off into smaller groups and get to work.  I can't really explain just how valuable I found this.  It was really nice to be able to work with a few colleagues and think about our successes and failures, along with our ideas for moving forward so quickly after our first try.

In 8 years of teaching, I've been introduced to a variety of different philosophies including Adaptive Schools, Instructional Intelligence, Tribes, Kagan, and PBL to name a few.  Learning new approaches to education is all part of the process and I'm certainly not the kind of teacher who wants to get in a rut and stick with my routine until I retire.  However, there are few times where I've really felt like I could take the time and debrief regarding the new ideas that I've tried to implement.  This inability to reflect isn't really anyone's fault, mind you.  Usually it stems from a feeling like I just don't have the time to detach from my busy teaching schedule to revisit what we spent so much time on.  The need to keep moving forward can be pretty relentless in school's and it doesn't always provide the chance to meditate.

I'm grateful for colleagues who I can be honest with and who are so willing to share.  It made for what I felt was a pretty productive morning where I really felt like I had something to show for my efforts: I didn't just learn about PBL but I did something with it.

I also had the opportunity to hear Brian Keating talk about sacred groves and the benefits of conservation.  He definitely had some great stories to tell about his travels to places in the world I probably won't get to see for myself.  He also shared a reading assignment that I'm intrigued with, having already discussed the topic somewhat with my wife.  I'm going to try and track down a copy of "The Last Child in the Woods" by Richard Louv and see if there's something to this idea of overcoming so-called Nature-Deficit Disorder.

~Mr.T