Three Things I'm Thinking About Right Now

1.  Looking forward to attending my first #DML2012 conference.  Should be a fascinating opportunity to learn from and with folks who are thinking about learning.  Also, as I’m mostly facilitating others’ learning lately, it’s nice to attend an event in a primarily learning role ((Which isn’t to say that I don’t approach teaching as a learning opportunity – but that sometimes the logistics of facilitation interfere with my ability to process what I’m learning as it’s happening.)).

2.  I’m honored to be a participant/facilitator for a session at this conference.  It’s called “Tapping into the Mutiplicity of Composition” and is a panel featuring several teachers who are making interesting things with students in the service of teaching writing and composition.  That should be a fascinating conversation. And, of course, we’ll be writing together.  Never a bad thing to do.

To support the conversation, we’ve built a couple of Pinterest boards as ways of creating galleries that show some of the texts that students are making in the panelists’ classrooms.  A second board focuses on the testimonies of the panelists as a way of providing some background that might not surface during our conversations.  The agenda for that session is taking shape and will be finally finalized soon.  At a time when so much of the “interesting learning” that is taking place for students is taking place beyond the classroom, and sometimes in spite of it, I wonder about the role of schools moving forward into new learning landscapes.  I hope that schools see the potential in other ways of learning that haven’t been privileged in our classrooms.  I wonder how to bring the fringe learning into those spaces.  I know that the has a role to play in these conversations ((Disclosure – the NWP has supported my attendance at this event.  I’m grateful for that.)).

1.  I’m struggling to write about some of my adventures in building cultures of play and love both in my school district as well as in my classroom.  I hope to get chunks of that thinking out here on the blog over the next few days.  My lens for this conference is basically “How do we promote cultures of learning and playfulness and care and concern for each other?”  Important.