Find Your Own Journey

As this summer has progressed, I have been following my passions. Reading, spending time with my family, and learning how to play the ukulele. This time has provided me a chance to personally recharge and relax. In addition, following Twitter, writing, and learning more about teaching and all things tech has brought me professional satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. I often forget that my life wasn't always like this. My original direction was along a different road. I did a lot of learning along the way to discover where my path would lead.

Nursing was my first choice of a career. Growing up, I watched my mother get in her uniform and drive away to the hospital. She was a "nurses" nurse. I mean, she went to nursing college. She didn't have a bachelor's degree, she trained from the early age of 18 at a nursing college in Michigan where she was in a classroom and worked shifts in a hospital. Her dorm was just next door to the school and hospital. She lived the life of a nurse full time from the beginning. It was her path that lead her away from poverty and ignorance to a life of self worth and gratification. She was extremely proud of her cap and uniform.

My mother loved being a nurse. She was proud of her profession, but she was careful of what she shared with her family. She protected us in her way, by not bringing sadness or suffering home with her. At least I never saw it. She welcomed us to visit the hospital floor where she worked to stop by and say "hello." Often my mother had to work the B shift 3:00 PM - 11:00 PM and she missed being at home when my sister, brother or I had prom or winter formal. She arranged to have us come by dressed up to visit the hospital before we went to dinner. She would introduce us to her patients and take a few pictures. The event made everyone feel good. But the stress and emotional toll of caring for sick people, never came home with her. I later found out she shared her feelings with my father to spare her children the grief she sometimes felt.

I always thought that nursing would be my path as well. I took every science class in high school I could. I joined an Explorers group and became a volunteer at my mother's hospital. I was not adverse to needles or blood, that was just part of the experience. My mother was wise and didn't discourage me, she just made sure I received as much exposure to the job as possible. In my junior year of high school, I realized that I wanted to focus on pediatric care because of my joy of working with children. I realize now my mother knew me better that myself. My mother recognized that nursing wasn't my passion. She never said it or even hinted to me that I shouldn't become a nurse. She believed in me and continued to encourage me to do my best in whatever I chose to do.

From an early age I had a strong sense of empathy for others and I had a tender heart. I especially had a deep compassion and understanding of children and I loved babysitting, particularly the babies. I had no experience with truly ill or dying children. She recognized that working with sick children would take an emotional toll on me, but she held back. She would inquire about my interests in nursing, but she didn't interfere. She helped to guide my volunteer time and worked hard to expose the challenges of nursing, not by telling me, but by allowing me to learn and experience for myself. She didn't want her experiences to shadow my own.

When I became a sophomore at California State University, Fullerton, I planned to transfer to San Diego State or Long Beach State to complete my nursing degree. My parents took me to both colleges and I knew then I wasn't committed to nursing. I lost interest and nursing didn't fit me any more. I had started taking classes in my field of study and I realized I enjoyed learning about child development. I still wanted to work with children, but I wanted to help guide and nurture their growing minds. Now a new path was discovered and my true passion was realized. I was empowered by my revelation and I blazed through my degree and multiple subject teaching credential with confidence and joy!

Sitting across the table from my 17 year old daughter, the cycle had come around full circle. This time, I'm the mother and I'm guiding my child through the bumps and challenges of growing up. She has decided to become a teacher. Imagine that? She has been accepted to California State University, Fullerton as a history major and is pursuing a high school teaching career. I plan to model after my mom. I don't want to question or debate her choices. I want her to discover, on her own, her passions and which path she will take.

She is determined to become a teacher, I believe she will be an amazing educator. But I also know, as you travel through life, choices and decisions lead you through a maze of highways and you might find yourself following a completely different road.  Above all, I want my daughter to find her joy and happiness, to be successful and contribute to the world, to find her own path to success. There will be bumps, diversions, detours, and challenges. That's what makes each journey unique. She will be in the driver's seat. She needs to find her own way and I need to slide over to the passenger side now. My job is to encourage her, coach her, and cheer her on, she can take it from here.

Reflect Like a Pirate

Hi All! I'm back already for another blog. My original goal was to post only once a week, however, I'm just so excited that I knew I needed to reflect on my personal reading and capture my thinking before I start my next book.  It is summer after all and I'm not as involved being a mother of four now. My children are older and busy working or off playing. The youngest one is working on getting his driver's license, so I'll be even more obsolete when he finishes. So what better way to spend my time than improving myself.

Since I'm moving into a different mode of motherhood, I have more time for professional reading, planning, writing, and Twittering. That's how I was introduced to @burgessdave and his wonderful book. I was thrilled after reading Dave Burgess' Teach Like a Pirate. He really spoke to me when he wrote, "Provide an uncommon experience for your students and they will reward you with an uncommon effort and attitude." I easily embraced Dave's idea of presenting lessons with passion, enthusiasm, and something compelling. My teaching already had some "pirate like" qualities and I feel even more empowered to "pump it up!" I am already revisiting lesson ideas to pull in more drama or movement to engage all my students.

I've just finished my second PD book for the summer and I have to say, Learn Like a Pirate by Paul Solarz has my head spinning! I'm absolutely running off the plank here people! I'm totally embracing the student lead classroom. Again I found some common ground and similarities, and Paul's book gave rich concrete examples that will allow me to further hand off more "jobs" in my class and provide greater opportunities for my students to lead. I appreciated how Paul had QR codes embedded in his book to link you to a page in his website or connect to a direct source that he refers to. Amazing! Together both books are providing me with a new schema of what my classroom will look like and feel like in the upcoming year.

First change I'm making will be my "goodie bag" for day one. My first day of school always ended with a paper bag with about 6-8 things in it to get our year started. There would be an eraser because we all make mistakes. There would be a mint because the students are worth a "mint" to me and so the items go. This time around, I plan to start with the bag on their desk first thing in the morning and we are going to use the items in their bag throughout the day. Dave mentions his first day of class and how he has Play Doh out for each student. Something so easy, yet different to set the stage. I want to have an unexpected event to begin our year, a non-threatening experience that will welcome students and get them thinking and creating immediately. I love the idea of Play Doh, so much so that I already went out to get it for my students. That will be item #1 in the bag!

Item #2 will be a small bag of marbles. This is inspired by Paul's "Marble Theory" class meeting. Paul explains that every child is born with the same amount of marbles in their brain. They start out in one big pile and as we grow and learn the marbles are then placed into different cups. The cups are the skills and talents that we have or learn as we develop. I made an instant connection to Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. In his book, Gladwell describes an expert is someone who has put in at least 10,000 hours of practice at their skill or ability.

A musician, an athlete, a mathematician all have put in well over 10,000 hours to excel at their given talent. I have used this example many times to explain to students that not everyone has the same skill or knowledge level. Ten thousand hours may not be equivalent to 10,000 marbles but the concepts are similar.  I am thrilled to use the "Marble Theory" to demonstrate how it might look using cups and marbles. I believe the combination will go a long way to help children understand that we all are intelligent it is just divided differently for each person.

This weekend I took to the streets to find every Dollar Tree store to find small bags of marbles. It only took me four stores to find enough, but now my marble trek is complete. Guess what? Along the way, I found my third item to be placed in my goodie bag, a micro terrarium from DuneCraft. These I also found at the Dollar Tree store and it took three more stops before I could find enough and of course the Dollar Tree store offered the better price. Yes, I'll admit, I'm a little zealous when it comes to my goodie bag items, but I really want my students to be engaged and create experiences that they will remember and be able to connect to as the year progresses.

Now the reason for the micro terrarium is to have the students connect to the "growth mindset" brought to us by Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset. This is a conversation that our grade level team started to discuss about three years ago and we introduced the concept in our Back to School Night meetings with our parents. We also continually use the understanding of growth mindset instead of fixed mindset to help both our parents and students understand that we need to be open with growth and understand that we are all in different places of our learning. I believe this terrarium will help students better connect with this concept.

Thanks to both Dave Burgess and Paul Solarz for their inspiring books. I love how both educators celebrate creativity, 21st century learning, and encourage taking risks. That is my plan to think creatively, take more risks, and provide the same opportunities for my students. I'm taking the first steps to implement my new changes. I'm excited to discover what will be next placed in the bag on my students' desks for the first day of school.

TwitterBug

I may have already said this before, but I have the TwitterBug! I don't believe I'm at the highest level of the Twitter chain, but I'm close. As a more recent user of Twitter, I'm not completely proficient in Twitterese. I find myself still trying to decipher the language of Twitter and limit my posts to 140 characters. Those who know me will recognize how much of a challenge this is, because I am not one to limit myself when it comes to sharing.

Twitter has provided a collaborative group of people who share life changing professional development. After finishing my first of many summer PD books, Teach Like a Pirate, by Dave Burgess, @burgessdave, I have a pile of more books to read and I am not getting enough sleep! I'm sure getting use of my Amazon prime membership. Next up for my summer reading will include:

I find it hard to pinpoint the greatest affect Twitter has had on me. I have chosen to follow amazing educators and my Twitter feed is relentless with exciting and wonderful posts. I am filled with envy when someone posts about a conference they are participating in, or traveling to. I want to be there with them. I feel left out because I can't possibly attend every conference, professional development opportunity, or training that exists. However, I can glean from those who have! The sharing is limitless and that fits right in with how I learn.

Most importantly,  I'm invigorated with energy and excitement for teaching and that is what Twitter and my #PLN (Professional Learning Network) have given me, renewed zeal for teaching, learning and sharing! Thanks Twitter!