Well…here I go. My first crack at writing a blog entry.

I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought about becoming a ‘blogger’ before. It seemed like a fun and trendy thing to do as I was finishing up my Education degree. THEN… I thought about it a little more. What would I even write about?! It was also at this point that I remembered that even though every year I had a New Year’s resolution to keep a journal… I would write in it once or twice and end up tearing the pages out because I didn’t want to go back and read what I had written one day and think about how silly my thoughts were. SO it turns out I wasn’t so keen on becoming a blogger after all…you know writing that could be accessed by anyone and would be much more permanent than pages I could later on rip out of a journal.

Anyway I’m sitting here typing (and biting my nails a lot due to nervous feelings of this being read by my colleagues) and thinking that this too is something I am doing that is pushing me out of my comfort zone!

My lovely comfort zone…the comfort zone I might have been content in remaining in before attending our first session with George. Since that day in March I have 1) stopped using Instagram to creep on people ( I have now made 3 posts!) 2) joined the world of Twitter AND 3) am thinking, very seriously, about starting a classroom blog.

I had recently told someone that I was fine with ‘being maxed out with technology’. I was fine with using what I know and not bothering to learn anything new unless it was completely necessary. After reading George’s book I realized that I’m not okay with this. I don’t want to be left behind. I want to ‘keep up with technology’ and use it to be more innovative in my teaching. Don’t get me wrong…I use technology everyday and love the projects that I am able to do with my class. I’m not even sure why I felt like I was okay with closing my mindset to technology. It seems a little ridiculous now that I think about it!

Now I realize that I can blog about what I know and what I know is…teaching Grade 2! I read other people’s blogs when looking for ideas for my own classroom. Maybe it’s time to return the ‘favour’ and share things that I do in my class with others. Reading The Innovator’s Mindset has made me think about many things. I have revisited my desire to continue my own learning. It also made me think about teachers who keep their best ideas to themselves. I want to be a teacher who pays it forward and continues to learn from a network of really great people!

 

Danielle Shrumm

Weston School

Cluster 2010