Lots More Voices

    While I’m watching the progress indicator ("Only five more minutes" for only half an hour  an hour  a really long time now — installing software is like going on a road trip with my dad.) move ever onward towards the moment where I discover if I’ve managed to save my data, I’m taking a few minutes to scan some of the new blogs from my friends, teachers, and colleagues that I’ve been involved with over the last few weeks.

    Here’s Donna, CSUWP teacher-consultant, my colleague and the other half of my school’s language arts department:

I’m wondering how teachers stay excited all the time. I know there’s so
much to learn but here I am in my classroom again. Talking memoir or
study habits and maybe I’m just disheartened because a kid who touched
my soul has somehow decided she should drop out.

Here’s Jason, a long-time collaborator and teacher in the CSUWP:

I so often pose questions to my students that either I don’t know the
answer to or choose not to share. An example of this is "The Mystery
Cube", a well-known Nature of Science activity that I’ve put my own
spin on to help teach Atomic Theory. It involves a cube with language
and symbols on each side. Their role is to then figure out, based on
logic and data collection, what the bottom of the cube says. I never
actually tell them if they are correct. Funny thing is… I have kids
that will approach me THREE years later and ask me to tell them what
was on the bottom of the cube. After a lesson that is based in thinking
critically, sharing data, and scientific community, why is that
students can not let go of the verfication they so desperately need
from their teachers. Frustration is a beautiful tool, especially in a
science classroom, primarily because it is so real.

Here’s Cindy, the CSUWP director and my teacher of so many subjects over the last eight years or so:

My reason for establishing this new blog is connected to my conviction
that I should be practicing the same professional habits I’m asking of
my students. In the process of doing so, I’m hoping that we can learn
from and with one another and that their increasingly insightful ideas
can move beyond our classroom to be shared with whoever else cares to
read them.

There are so many other good, rich, interesting voices emerging all over the place right now.   Everyone that I’ve seen honestly and openly approach blogging has added something rich and  vital to the conversation. 
    Of course, I’m both excited and scared to death about the development of more and more online conversation.  In the end, I am so selfishly glad to have these voices to plug into my learning network, but on the other hand, as more and more people come to the blogging party, it’ll become more and more difficult to stay on top of it all.
    Of course, being able to include the other teachers in my area  in these conversations is a downright fantastic feeling — imagine how interesting things will get when teachers might be required reading for each other, when we can finally peer into the classrooms and the minds of passionate people that are just down the hall or the street from us, but that we never "have time" to see teach or to engage in conversation with. 
    Can you imagine the strength in those connections?  Now add our students into the mix, writing and thinking and learning from and with each other.
    Sounds too good to ever be allowed to happen, doesn’t it?  Allow me some hope tonight.  I know that connectedness and writing don’t solve all the problems of the world. 
    But they’re both a good first step.