Labyrinth Walker

I have neglected my blog for many months, so it always surprises me when I log in and find that someone is following me. This morning I found a new follower Labyrinth.Living and decided to learn a little more about them by reading their
A Bit About Me page. I was immediately filled with awe. I quickly added this blog to the list of blogs I follow and vowed diligence in reading it. It is an honor to have this person following me. I look forward to following her as she walks through the labyrinth of life.

Cooling Off

According to Nikki Phipps
“many people find yucca plants to be welcome additions to the landscape. Others, however, consider them to be problems. In fact, due to their rapid growth and vast root system, yucca plants can quickly become a nuisance.” I fall into the latter category of people. I find these plants to be a huge nuisance and have decided to get them out of my yard. I’ve been outside with the pick-ax hacking away most of the afternoon. When I got so hot I couldn’t stand it, I came in to cool off and found myself cruising the internet. I really enjoyed reading professornana’s blog and felt inspired to write a blog entry myself. I’m cool now though, so I better get back out there and attack a few more yucca plants. Maybe I can come back later and blog about the books I’ve been reading… or the bike I’m going to get for my birthday … or how excited I am about our upcoming trip to the mountains…. or how great my yard is going to look when I get rid of all these yucky yucca plants.

Finally!

After weeks of trying to figure out what I had done to kill our internet connection, I finally called Comcast. As it turns out, it wasn’t my fault at all. The repairman spent a few hours this afternoon rewiring our cable. Finally, I can reconnect!!

Scattering Light

I loved reading about Nancy Teaches’s(did I punctuate that correctly?) horrible case of BPA (Blog Posting Anxiety) today. I think I might have a form of BPA myself. When I look at the little calendar in the upper right hand corner of my blog and notice that today’s date is not highlighted, I begin to feel anxious. I begin to panic as I realize that I haven’t blogged today. I wonder what will happen if I let one day go without blogging. Will that one day of silence lead to a second day? If I miss two days in a row, will that lead to three? How many days will it take before I start to doubt my ability to blog? I feel anxious. I’m not sure I have anything meaningful to share with the world today. But I have this voice inside me that keeps telling me I need to post something every day just for the sake of practice. So that I can develop my skills as a writer.

Once again, I find myself very thankful for Nancy’s words of wisdom. Today, she reminded me that regardless of its value to others, my blog gives me an opportunity for creativity.

It was a blessing to hear Laurie Halse Anderson speak at the ALAN breakfast in Philadelphia. In her speech she gave this definition of light. “Light = the divine spark that we all carry” and went on to say, “Creative expressions are manifestations of that light.” Her words come to mind tonight as I realize that my blog is a place for me to express creativity. Even if I don’t have anything to say, by being creative I am scattering light into the world. When I think of blogging that way, my anxiety melts away.

Leading Toward the Light

As she struggles to fulfill the curriculum required by her district while using workshop to meet the needs of her young readers and writers, Jen at A Teacher’s Life… asks, “How do I mix my workshop with a weekly story and set test questions?” When I read her post I couldn’t help but think that she is struggling with the same thing that turns so many teachers into the cynics Jim Burke wrote about in his post Seek the Light.

I ran into a few cynics on Facebook just moments before Jim’s Seek the Light post URL popped up on my twitter. Jim’s words,

So next time you find yourself in a dark patch, cornered by some salty dog who wants to fill your ear with poison, seek the light by excusing yourself, so that your career and your life may be long and healthy and beautiful like those magnificent trees.

reminded me to excuse myself from that Facebook conversation and seek light elsewhere. Which makes me realize that Jen’s question doesn’t always turn teachers into cynics. It sometimes turns them into bloggers. Many of us have found blogging and other social networks in our attempt to find the light that will help us survive and thrive in the cynical world of education.

Now, let’s all get over to Jen’s blog and lead her toward the light.

A Twitter Story

“I’m wondering if it is possible to take part in meaningful conversation on Twitter. I always feel more like a stalker.”

I have made several attempts to figure out the ins and outs of Twitter a few times since I first created my Twitter profile in March of 2009. I was drawn to Twitter for the same reason I am drawn to graduate school. I was hoping that I would find a place to connect with like minds and have meaningful conversations, but I just hadn’t been able to figure out how to make it work. It was kind of neat to get random updates on the whereabouts and activities of my friends for a few days, but it didn’t take long before I was tired of having to pull my phone out to delete tweets about what they were eating and where they were going. I figured if I got tired of their tweets, they probably weren’t interested in updates about my activities or score updates from the Nashville Predators games. So, I stopped tweeting for a few weeks. When I went to New Orleans, I gave it another shot though. I guess I figured it would be more interesting for people to hear about my activities since I was in a fun city. Sadly, I would send the tweets and no one would respond. I figured I just wasn’t witty enough to be interesting in 140 characters or less. On June 17th I found Neil Gaiman a.k.a. neilhimself on Twitter and thought maybe the key to Twitter would be to follow people like Neil. People I find very interesting but don’t get the chance to actually meet in real life. So, used the “find people” feature to find people I thought would be interesting to follow. Sadly, there was not an education group to click on so I ended up with a few authors and a few entertainers and spent the next few months feeling like a stalker every time Neil Gaiman sent a tweet. Every so often I would get a message letting me know that I had a new follower, so I would check to see who the person was and try to figure out why they would want to follow me. Most of them were obviously salespeople, but on the morning of January 30th, I discovered a follower that caught me by surprise-caboni a.k.a. Tim Caboni, associate dean, professor, and higher education fundraising scholar at the graduate school of my dreams, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College. Suddenly, my interest in Twitter was back, but I still didn’t know how to use it effectively. I didn’t know what to tweet that would help me connect with like-minded educators and make them want to connect with me.

I think it may have happened today though. Let me see if I can recreate the twitersation here:

Me: I’m wondering if it is possible to take part in meaningful conversation on Twitter. I always feel more like a stalker.

Childofthe80s: I usually jump in. My theory-if people didn’t want others to they wouldn’t make it public.

Me (after discovering wtwriting): I realized that I needed to rethink my following list. Ex. neilhimself = amazing. Not a conversation I could jump into though.

Me: I feel like a teenager again. Trying to figure out where I belong.

In the mean time, as I was clicking around I started finding educators I admire and stalk in real life- Cris Tovani, Donalyn Miller, Carol Jago, Brenda Power and Franki Sibberson. (I really have stalked them in real life. I think I made them late for dinner in Philadelphia because I cornered Cris Tovani at the revolving door. The rest of them were in the limo waiting. Franki Sibberson had to get out of the limo and rescue Cris because they had dinner reservations.) I was beginning to feel like I had possibly found the key to Twitter happiness, and then it happened. I clicked around until I found a link to a blog post byNancyTeaches. Her blog post welcomed me to the world of Twitter that I’ve searched for. She described exactly what I had sought. When I read her words, “Granted, I’ve always been an enthusiastic teacher, but I often felt alone and had to tone it down around my colleagues.” I knew the feeling she was describing. It was the feeling that had led me to Twitter in the first place. I quickly became a follower and sent her a tweet letting her know that I loved her blog post.

Me: NancyTeaches, I love your blog entry.

NancyTeaches: Thanks for the compliment. I would have responded sooner but I was too busy reading your amazing blog.

Me: Thanks. My blog needs much work. I am working on a post in response to your post now.

And so, I say thank you to NancyTeaches for helping me figure out where I belong- right here. I look forward to getting back in the conversation, and I can’t wait to see how using Twitter helps me become a better blogger.

I discovered Wordle today!

If you go to www.wordle.net/create you too can create a cool word cloud like this one I created by copying the kindergarten reading standards from the Tennessee Department of Education website and pasting them in wordle. .

You can also go to the wordle gallery and see cool clouds like this one created by Alicia Lewis from the very informative article Curriculum Theory and Practice. The article can be found at
found at www.infed.org/biblio/b-curric.htm

It is very cool, but what is it good for you ask? Well, if you check out the presentation Sixteen Interesting Ways to Use Wordle in the Classroom by Tom Barrett, you will have at least 16 ideas for how to use wordle. I’m sure you will think of even more.

If you are anything like me, you will find yourself wondering from website to website with your eyes popping out in amazement.

New Beginnings

Every day is a new beginning. Every morning we wake up to a new day. We wake up to an opportunity to begin again. It is up to us to decide whether this day will be a new beginning or a continuation of the day before. Today I have decided to begin again. I have decided to freshen up the appearance of this blog and seize the opportunity to begin again. Today I will begin again to share my thoughts with the world.

Week 24

I’ve been puzzled, perplexed and disappointed with my blogging for several months now. 24 weeks to be exact. I have let my blog slip away with only a few posts here and there for the last 24 weeks. Why haven’t I had anything to share? Why can’t I think of anything to say? Should I just quit trying? As I drove home from the grocery store yesterday, I found myself pondering these questions. The answer hit me right in the tummy. I realized that all my spare thinking time over the last 24 weeks, the time that had been devoted to thinking and philosophizing, has been overtaken by the baby kicking around inside me. I have spent all my alone time thinking about the little baby growing inside me and talking to her. So, will I write more now that I have made this discovery? I’m not sure. I think I may be ready to share my thoughts about this little miracle, but then again I might not be. I guess we will see.

Perceptions

“We began to realize that if we wanted to change the situation, we first had to change ourselves. And to change ourselves effectively, we first had to change our perceptions.” Stephen R. Covey

When I got home this afternoon I was so tired I wanted to go straight to bed. I was worn out from a long day of trying to figure out my role in improving literacy in my school system. While there are many teachers who have that same goal, I am worn down by those who seem happier to complain. The sad thing is that the more worn down I become, the easier it is for me to fall into step with those complainers. After a long meeting that didn’t go nearly as well as I thought it should, a dinner that was less than pleasing for everyone in my family but me and a check of my e-mail, I found myself worn out but unable to sleep. My mind was racing way too fast to allow it to shut down for a nice rest. I finally decided that I should get myself out of bed and put those racing thoughts onto paper. Eventually that paper led me to my blog where I could share my thoughts with those of you whose positive voices I have been missing for too long. My thoughts led me to the question, “How do you get people to open their eyes and see things from the eyes of others?” This question led me to the The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People because I remembered that it was in reading this book that I began to open my eyes. On page 18 I found the quote that started this entry, and I was reminded that perhaps if I want to change the situation, I should change myself. I remembered that it isn’t my responsibility to get others to open their eyes. It is my responsibility to change only my own perception.

I think it may have worked. I feel the sleep coming.