This wrap up represents about .01% of what happened this week. Much was accomplished as the trust grew by day and hourly and with each new friendship.
I apologize to the PLC members for no video from the week. In our defense, we were literally so intent on the work that we would have forgotten any cameras in the room anyway, and, really to the point, what we were doing could never have been even remotely captured on film.
We learned about educreations, a major new import from Canada (Kristin Duncan via Chris Stoltz and thank you both). I will contact Blaine on Monday about making sure it gets plenty of attention at NTPRS because it is just the very coolest new idea in the past five years, up there only with jGR. Yes, it equals or even surpasses jGR in the classroom kick ass factor.
En bref, it’s about giving an iPad to a fourth student to go with the story and quiz writers and the artist. I will meet with Chris Stoltz later tonight to talk about getting a tutorial (hardlink bar above) set up here asap on it.
We will also publish the article first chance we get so you can get started on it. If you don’t use educreations this year it would be like saying no to a large amount of free wonderfulness lying in front of you as you walk down a sidewalk. Be excited about this. It will expand the dimensions of our teaching by a factor of wow. Canada is bringing it on this one.
We also upgraded and refined our coaching model through the week and I will report in more depth on that later. This new model is a keeper. The people who worked all week, starting with Angie and Carly on Monday and ending at midnight Thursday night with Yasar, all were smooth as silk.
This paragraph is important for me:
I always have had doubts as to the overall effectiveness of this site (articles/comments and videos) as a training vehicle because it wasn’t live training which nothing can replace. So it came as a total shock to me when Angie Dodd (Vermont) and Joseph Eye (NY) and Brian Peck (Detroit) and the others did what they did and then when I asked them how they did it they said they did it mainly by watching videos, not just the ones here but others all over the internet including sites run by our own blog members.
Videos are very hard to make, since we are all so busy. To produce really refined and polished video requires much effort on our parts. And it is a testimony to our vision as a group that we are willing to even put up video of ourselves teaching because it is never our best work. (That touches on the spirit of leaving our egos at the door in the War Room work as well.)
But when Angie and Joe and Brian and everyone else who worked this week taught, it shocked me – it was like they had been doing this work for years and in Brian’s case it was only since last October.
So hot dang on that. Maybe we can get a collection of blog members’ websites here and make that list into a category or hard link. If you have a blog and want to share it with other group members, send the links below and we will find a way to publish them somewhere here. Maybe on the Primers hardline. Where do we put it?
The new coaching model that was suggested by many, as of the end of the week, allows teachers ten minutes of uninterrupted teaching and then five minutes of coaching and comments by us. I think that this model is going to change the entire face of coaching in the TPRS community. One teacher said about the process:
…I think the 10 minute coaching, 5-10 minute feedback is a good model. I was glad I was able to observe one evening and then participate the second. It was good to have seen a number of people go before me….
At the closing ceremonies earlier yesterday the DPS teachers feted my retirement and told the iFLT group stories about our time together. As I stood there in front of the group my heart melted and I realized two things: that my career counted for something (it sure didn’t seem like it at the time) and that the gold lies in our friendships. We support each other and Diana and Carol and Blaine and all the awesome presenters make it possible every summer.
I would agree to teach another 37 years right now, just tell me where to sign, not really, if I knew that at the end of it I would one day be toasted by some of the best people on the planet. My prayer is that all the teachers who attended the conference will one day, with God’s guidance and love, some day be as lucky as I have been, to be in a district where what I say has value and what I think means something.
I don’t have words to express my thanks to my colleagues and especially Diana and Susan Gross so I won’t even try. Yesterday will stay with me forever.