Happy New Year 2011

Downtown to see fireworks... Happy New Year!

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NYSCATE 2010

NYSCATE was great again this year, thought provoking as always. It was great to catch up with old friends and meet new. I'm left with a tired brain and more questions than answers. (Mission accomplished NYSCATE, I am always trying to do that with my students.)

Over the next few days, I'll dig through my notes and tweets and I will share some of what I gathered from the conference and some of the questions I'm left with.

Happy Thanksgiving break!

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Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.5

Dusting the Blog Off

Brian Smith is someone who I consider a good friend.  I also respect him as a colleague. He challenges me to think and pushes me to do more. Last week, at a Rocheater Area Literacy Council meeting he sat on a panel and remarked that we have an obligation share what we are doing.  We have had conversations about this type of thing before.  We have had conversations before and he has told me to write, share, reflect, and be transparent, but I didn't bite.

Here I am, sitting on the couch at 10 on a Saturday night, still thinking about Brian's comment (perhaps inspired by NYSCATE starting tomorrow).  So here it is... A concerted effort at reviving my blog and sharing. 

Today, I had the privilege of presenting at the NYSCATE Preconference Session.  My session was entitled Using Technology to Transform the Writing Process and I felt that it went very well. There was some good conversation in the beginning and lots of great questions at the end of the session.  During the session, one of the questions I brought up came from a quote by Arthur Ashe, 

Success is a journey not a destination. The doing is usually more important than the outcome.

My question was more specific to writing, but in essence, the question was something like this: Is it more important to give a student a good experience to learn from or is it more important to get to understand or be able to do something?  I bought up taking road trips with friends. (When you begin one you don't yell "ROAD TRIP" for nothing, right?) You remember a particular trip with friends just as much as I do, and I am sure that the destination was not the only thing you remember.  I'm sure you remember getting pulled over, running out of gas, and/or getting lost in the middle of the night just as much as, or more than, the actual trip itself.

That said, why, then, do we focus so much on end destination for kids? Do we really know where their journey will take them? Of course we need to have a goal in mind, but is it OK to say everyone in our classes isn't ready to 'get it' yet? Does my road trip theory apply to learning?

I would argue that it does. 

Transparency: Do you see through it?

Are incompetence or lacking confidence synonyms for transparency? Do you view someone who is transparent as weak and not up to the task? Or do you value transparency in others?

In the past I have had interesting 'discussions' (more like, "How could you write that where people can read it?") because of things that I have written or said. Namely, a post that I wrote a few years ago at the end of a school year about feeling like I failed. My colleague could not get past the fact that I admitted that I think I may have been able to do better. He kept saying, "What if one of your parents sees that post?" "What is your administrators see that post?"

I'll often get looks from passers-by when I admit to my students that I made a mistake. The looks on students' faces at the beginning of the year when I say I made a mistake are priceless. They act as they have never have heard "my bad" from a teacher before.

In others, I value humility. I value someone who is not afraid to take a shot, and will claim responsibility for missing. I value when someone is self-reflective and is not afraid (or too wrapped up in being 'right') to admit a mistake. The people with these qualities are the leaders I choose to follow. These are the qualities I try live and pass on to my students each day.

So, what do you think? Is transparency a weakness? Or is being 'right all of the time' not all its cracked up to be?