Amanda and I have now been back in Canada for just over two weeks, and time feels like it flying by. Before we left Kuwait for the summer I was envisioning myself relaxing for a few days and then getting down to some prep work for next year. In hindsight that was probably pretty bold thinking when I have a wedding to plan for and friends and family to see. I'm still churning out the ideas, but the physical work has slowed down. Amanda, though, is still busy making great resources on her site.
One thing that has come out of our visiting with friends, besides the great time we have reconnecting, is the exchanging of ideas. A lot of my friends are teachers or are married to teachers, so they have an invested interest in the discipline. It can be a pretty special thing to sit down over drinks and discuss hot education topics. Collaboration and sharing are the only way that we can grow as teachers and individuals. To be able to sit down and throw ideas about changing or improving education is an invaluable form of professional development. What I'm doing in my classroom, or planning too, might seem completely foreign to my friend who has just entered the profession, but he listens and tries to understand the aim I am trying to meet. Similarly, he has a lot of fresh ideas that he wants to develop and use that I think are great, but might not necessarily have been ones I would ever have thought of.
Even our non-teaching friends often get in on the chatter, which is probably because they are forced to...oops. However, they have a variety of professional and educational backgrounds, so they bring some out-of-the-box thinking to the dialogue. It is fantastic, and it is something that helps to reinvigorate the teaching mind.
One thing that has come out of our visiting with friends, besides the great time we have reconnecting, is the exchanging of ideas. A lot of my friends are teachers or are married to teachers, so they have an invested interest in the discipline. It can be a pretty special thing to sit down over drinks and discuss hot education topics. Collaboration and sharing are the only way that we can grow as teachers and individuals. To be able to sit down and throw ideas about changing or improving education is an invaluable form of professional development. What I'm doing in my classroom, or planning too, might seem completely foreign to my friend who has just entered the profession, but he listens and tries to understand the aim I am trying to meet. Similarly, he has a lot of fresh ideas that he wants to develop and use that I think are great, but might not necessarily have been ones I would ever have thought of.
Even our non-teaching friends often get in on the chatter, which is probably because they are forced to...oops. However, they have a variety of professional and educational backgrounds, so they bring some out-of-the-box thinking to the dialogue. It is fantastic, and it is something that helps to reinvigorate the teaching mind.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJeff, I have an award for you! What you are doing is definitely versatile, so you deserve it.
Delete- Amanda
Inspired in Second