Whirlwind Thoughts on EdCampChicago

It has been two days since I attended EdCampChicago.  Immediately afterwards my head was spinning with all of the thoughts and ideas that the day generated.  It was the result of spending the day with so many passionate teachers, so full of ideas. My thoughts have slowed a little bit and I keep finding myself dwelling on a few things more than others. 

When the day started, the Atrium at Stevenson High school was full of teachers but they were spread around two or three to a table.  You could feel the excitement but as of yet people were not yet convinced that this was any different than your typical PD experience.  That changed in about 15 minutes.  By the time the topics had been proposed and the first session had begun it was clear the day would be different.  I will spare you the details of the entire day and just skip to a moment when I looked around and realized that something amazing was happening. 

In the midst of the final session, a new session broke out.  Teachers gathered in the Atrium where we had begun so seperately and a group of 30 to 40 of us started sharing our technology knowledge.  No one was offended that this impromptu session broke out.  People were taking turns and contributing what they could and taking what they needed.  No one had to be watched to make sure they were being productive, no one had to be in charge to keep the peace.  This was crowdsourcing, collaboration and sharing as I would hope to create it in my class. 

That is really point #2.  We did the planning and the learning.  There was not one star.  I benefitted from more people's input than I could count.  I gained perspective. This is really what I want my class to become.  I want to let them choose more.  I want them to decide how they learn and help each other in the process.  I want them to feel the control that the the participants at EdCampChicago valued so much.  I want magic to happen for them like it did for me. We did more than just learn about what our classes should be.  We modeled it without even trying. 

After pondering how natural it was, I am convinced that it is a model that can feel natural for my students.  

Teaching to the very end.

The last few weeks I have felt all of the typical end of the year stresses.  It is harder to get out of bed.  It is much more tempting to just go home after school.  But this year I have manages to prevent myself from succumbing to these tempatations. In fact I feel like the momentum I have is increasing because rather than holding on until the end of the year.  I have been implementing a new lesson, a new assignment or a new learning objective nearly every day.  I have been cataloging things that I have wanted to try since I first started using twitter last year and following #sschat early this year.  After going throught he intial lurker phase, and moving into the active participant phase, I have now moved into the implementation portion of the twitter cycle of development.  I find that the ideas and conversations that I have taken part in are now flowing into the things that I do and it isn't requiring the effor that I thought it would take. 

It has taught me some important lessons and reminded me of a few that I learned before but need to be reminded of.  First off, teachers need to direct their own growth, assess themselves and address their own needs in a way that no amount of school organized inservices can.  Secondly, teachers have to fulfill their obligations to the school board, the state and the government and they should, but there are other needs that we need to focus on that the powers that be will not nuture.  So we must.  There won't be inservices to address these needs, so we will have to do so independently. Finally, I have realized that when my mind is focused on growth, mine or the students, my classroom has a completely different energy about it.  In the last two months I have created a better vision of where I am going in the classroom than I have in the last four years and I am taking steps to get there.

It is for these reasons that my classes have been going really well lately. I have things to accomplish and I am not waiting until next year to get them done.

Wow. Osama bin Laden and the Power of my PLN.

I was just sitting down to make out my lesson calendar for the next two weeks.  It was a typical Sunday. I was finishing up a discussion with a few #sschat people when suddenly everything blew up.  It started when I received a tweet from the President's Press Secretary, a good person to follow if you are a social studies teacher.  Within minutes my twitter feed exploded.  In the 40-45 minutes it took for the President to speak I had already begun working with the #sschat people to frame the lesson for tomorrow and share resources to make it possible.  Tomorrow when i go into class I will not just be teaching a lesson that I threw together overnight and on the drive in to work.  I will be sharing a lesson that I crafted while conssidering the opinions of literally hundreds of co-workers and teachers.  I will be using resources and links that were shared and evaluated by professionals that I respect.  I am so eager to get into the classroom that I doubt very seriously if this insomniac will be able to sleep at all. 

This is the power of the effort that I have been putting in to Twitter and #sschat lately.  I do it because it yields such great results and because it has so drastically improved the power of my lessons and the efficiency of my process. 

Tomorrow night #sschat will debrief what we did in class today and discuss ways to teach these historical events.  The thought that is really spinning in my head even more than what I can accomplish tomorrow, is how much better I am going to be in the future when such a huge news story breaks.  

I need to get to sleep now, I hope.  This is why I am proud to be a teacher. 

P.S. I am absolutely sure that no one I worked with for the last three hours got any overtime pay.  This is what teachers do to serve their students.