EducatingMe

I was so excited to catch up on some much needed blog reading this weekend while I was not being at #ITSE2015. I am not lamenting here . I got to read @mrsdsings  post which is linked up here , and I found @okeducationtruths  follow up which is linked here . So the question is Why Teach?? With an  up'ed ante question is Why Teach Here?  So here it is... Why teach? Because it can be fun. My first major in college was Theatre. Mr. Cobb says in his post that often people grab a major without thinking of the career that should follow. I did love acting, but knew it would never really take me to Hollywood. When I finally did settle on teaching, it was for the summers off. Yeah, I know. I am one of those. But it only made sense to take all that I knew from acting and use it in the classroom to teach young'uns. Golly, did it turn out to be amazing. Kids were having fun AND learning at the same time. I was being "the anti-teacher" that I knew from my days in schooling.

Let's pretend for a moment you just became the head coach of a brand new football team. You have been given the fastest runners and some of the best receivers in the nation. You head out to the field; only to find out none of them know what a first down is. Sometimes it doesn't matter who your team consists of, if you don't know what it takes to do the job, then you have to go back to the film room to learn the game. I would say despite being a 4 yr old school and the growing pains that comes with a 30-40% enrollment increase each of those years, we are doing an average job. Average however, is not where we want to be. So this week our entire administrative team hit the locker room to watch the proverbial tapes. We started this process three years ago, with a group of only 8 of us. Many good discussions came from the 2 day retreat, but we were barely able to move the mark going into our third year. This in part was due not including the entire administrative team in b

What a week!! I found myself in a car this past Tuesday driving the 10 hours to Illinois for the Google Apps for Education Summit 2015. This conference was hosted by the amazing EdTech Team just outside of Chicago.  The first thing we were asked, before we ever set foot in the building, was how well do you know Google and the apps used for education. I typically walk into any setting knowing I am likely the least knowledgeable person in the room on the topic. This way there is more collaboration and I can see how others are using things rather than push the ways we do things. I humbly said I knew quite a bit, but that I was no Google Ninja. However, I felt pretty confidant about my Google skills, but tried to under sell myself. HA!! Turns out...there was absolutely no frickin' reason to undersell my abilities. These programs which I have been using and sharing for the last couple of years have a whole new level of kick-ass to them that I am pretty sure educators are not e

I had this professor in college. His name was Andy Eurich and he taught business law. Funny thing is, I retained only one tidbit of the BLaw class and that was the definition of a reasonable person. Would a reasonable person...this?  Could a reasonable person...that? He taught a multitude of other other topics, they just had nothing to do with business law. Reminds me of a professor that got his tenure and then got pissed off and decided to teach whatever the heck he wanted. And I am pretty sure we all loved it and also got C's because we could not pass a single test. I learned all about Reaganomics and what thoughtful citizens should do. I learned that I was NOT a unique snowflake. And I learned to create days of DiVinci. What does that mean? Well, Leonardo DiVinci  was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer.  He was always discovering and looking for more and the first at a lot of thing