Day 61How will you take ownership for your own learning? This is an easy one. I don't have to dig deep to respond to this question.
I'm wired to own my learning. I have never been complacent. Never in my decades of teaching have I felt comfortable just going along doing the same old thing. Never. I have always been personally motivated to learn and improve my practice as a direct result of what I'm learning. This practice of continuous learning has been further fueled by the women I teach with. They're wired the same way. A week never goes by without receiving a text or an email or a tweet sharing out some awesome new resource. Sometimes it is a link to a blog. Other times it is an article, a Twitter thread, or an Amazon link to the next book I should read. Sometimes this passion for learning looks a tad different. Sometimes it is my colleague next door or from across the hall running (not exaggerating here) into my room to share the awesome thing that just happened or the interesting thing a child just shared. Sometimes inspired learning happens around the lunch table when we finally have a moment to sit down and share what is going on in each of our rooms. Sometimes I learn from my colleagues during common planning time or team meeting times or during our data block. More often though, it happens organically as we move through our 180 days together. I am so appreciative of the excellent professional development opportunities I've been afforded by my district. Some of them have been truly amazing and transformational but I don't depend on these opportunities to fuel my learning. I am grateful for them. However, I work to ensure that I am learning every year, every month, every term, every week, every day. You get the idea. Our state works to ensure that teachers are learning by mandating that we accumulate a given number of professional development points (hours spent learning = points) and they dictate that we spend a certain number of hours on content, pedagogy, sheltered English Immersion, and special education. Meeting the state's requirements at recertification time has never been a challenge. I own my learning. I certainly don't behave as an educator committed to life-long learning because the state of Massachusetts dictates that I must. Silly. This year I'm trying something new. I'm doing what I've always done to maintain my hunger for learning. Only, this year, I'm reflecting on what I'm learning and what I'm thinking about what I'm learning, and what I'm doing about what I'm learning through this blog. I'm making my learning visible. Okay...maybe only visible to me. But still visible.
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Marie McManus BrighamA public school teacher who gets to wonder alongside fourth-graders. Archives
December 2018
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