I was looking at my cluster map and noticed how many more hits I had that were from the United States, and it got me thinking. If I have only been to the US once, why are there followers from there - why are there some large numbers of people in concentrated areas reading my blog? I must be doing something right - I must be connecting with people. This makes me excited and amazed. If I can connect to people across the world and they are able to keep up on what I am doing, then maybe my I am doing things that excite other people as well. I get many of my ideas from other people - I do not re-invent the wheel just because I will be able to say it was "my idea". Adapting from other people's 'brain-child' is a positive experience. It allows people who have blocked idea flows, to be given a seed to start more ideas flowing through them - I know that when I go away from meetings with other teachers I get very inspired.
I know what you're thinking - what about those teachers who only have negative thoughts, those teachers who only focus on problems and issues? Well my answer to that is always to ignore and move forward. It is not to say that I don't have bad days, that those people NEVER rub off on me and bring me down, because that would be lying. I have felt bogged down, busy, tired, frustrated, pulled-in-all-directions, but I always think to myself how much worse off it could be and why I got into teaching in the first place. To inspire my students! To inspire my students, I must be inspired myself - even to get my day started! So when I dread something like a day where we meet with a bunch of teachers that I know will just be at the end of their ropes, I make sure to bring some of my own ideas to those teachers meetings and maybe I can inspire them! Most times it does work, and it actually allows for them to open up and discuss their ideas as well.
To share ideas in a web-based medium, I have been doing some personal Professional Development. I have built a few wikispaces lately; one of them you know about - or should if you are one of my thousand listeners :-) , which is my CPT project ideas wikispace (http://cptprojectideas.wikispaces.com), and the newest one to my collection of wikispaces - the list is getting up there - is my Nokomis School projects website. I have been wanting to get my students work online and share it with other teachers so that my students and I can get feedback on our ideas, projects, and successes we have had over the last few years. Check it out - http://nokomisprojects.wikispaces.com
One rant down, another to come later....
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