by Tracy Rosen, teaching & consulting since 1996, blogging about it here since 2007. All views are my own and you should take them with a grain of salt, I do.
I read a quick post by Joanne Jacobs on the story of a teacher who was suspended for one month for a picture of her at a bridal shower. In the picture she is seen near the male stripper who was working the shower. This picture was posted to facebook by someone else.
A little while ago I wrote a post on my blog about some of the daily frustrations of teaching, it fed to my facebook account, a parent complained about it, I was cautioned about writing anything that could ‘come back on the school’.
This fed into my twitter feed today:
And MissTeacha and I had a twitter conversation today about morality clauses in teacher contracts, one of which she has. When I asked her who decided on what was immoral behaviour, she replied:
So. Either we continue to accept the fact that teachers (and librarians) are held to higher moral standards (whatever that means, depending on whose standards we choose as the metre stick) and try to negotiate our lives within the flattening of our social spheres, or we start to tell new stories and create new norms around how our personal lives are judged in the widening spotlight. Can we really expect our social networks to change without a change in how we navigate and are judged within them?
These twitter birds were created by Luc Latulippe and are available as a free download on his site. Click the image to go there.
Really. I am afraid to hit my feed reader. In the past if I missed a day or two I’d be overwhelmed with the amount of information that fed into my system once I clicked update. And now it’s been ages since I’ve checked my feed reader. I see the link to it right now on my desktop panel and I consistently, consciously, studiously ignore it.
I now read blog posts as I see them announced on twitter, either by the authors themselves – ‘New blog post tweet, tweet, tweet…’ or, more emphatically (not quite the word I am looking for but it will do until I find it), by others referring those in their network to ‘Read a great post about … tweet, tweet, tweet’.
I trust this process way more than the feed reading process. I trust Marcy and Miss Teacha and Linda and Mike and Jacques and Jose and Kevin and John and…. there are so many people who refer me to good posts all the time.
The point is I trust this process over the arbitrary new post count next to the blog title in my reader. I trust this process to point me towards cutting edge, or sometimes just plain amusing, blog posts by people both in and on the edges of my learning network. The post has been read and subsequently reviewed (via the existence of the tweet) by someone I trust to have discriminating judgement or taste or however you want to dice it on subjects educational, or musical, or artistic, or doggy. It is a people centered process. I trust the process because I trust the people who keep it going.
So bye bye feed reader – and the overwhelming nature of it for me, how unnecessary. As long as twitter remains relevant as a space for communication that is how I will get updates on what to read. It suits me just fine.
Yesterday I started to participate in a collaborative story writing adventure hosted by Kevin (Kevin’s Meandering Mind). Basically, he has started a story and a group of us are writing it collectively, though one at a time. I’ve done this kind of thing using paper and pen technology in the past where I hand out pieces of paper with different story starters on them. Students are given 2 minutes to write, the timer buzzes and they have to pass off their story to the right, receiving one from their peer to the left, to continue for another 2 minutes, and so on. Kids love it, I use it as a writing workout to get the juices flowing.
Our story is taking place via Google Wave, though Kevin has also begun the story in two other places as well – find out how you can participate.
Here is the starter, written by Kevin:
To say she was connected would be too simple a statement. She was never disconnected. Even in her sleep, her dreams came to her in bursts of 140 characters. (She knew this because she often woke up and jotted down her dreams, a habit she acquired in her college psychology course. Her notebook was full of nighttime ramblings.) And so, the night of the storm, with the weather forecasters freaking out about the high winds and possible lightning, she, too, began to freak out. She checked for batteries. She stood waiting near the electrical outlets, ready to pull the plugs at the first flash of lightning.The last thing she expected was the knock at the door, but then, the unexpected always comes at the unexpected moment …
So, so far there are 2 variations based on this same starter, the third is being launched this morning. It reminds me that people have an amazing capacity for creativity. With the same givens, different results are possible.
This can be transfered onto our own work in classrooms and organizations. We do not need to be stuck in one story. Especially if we collaborate with others, we can certainly evolve our stories and trigger change for ourselves and those around us.
One of my favourite books from my childhood, ok, maybe my teen or young adulthood. Click the image to view source and read more about the book and the movie.
(Another one is my procrastination technique of updating and or creating and or redesigning blogs when I have other things to do. On that note… back to knitting. I have roughly 7 hours to knit about 2 feet of scarf and to go buy some icing sugar, which I forgot to buy yesterday, in order to make fudge for tomorrow.)
I wish you only the best for your holiday, whatever that may be :)
and really they don’t. Just when I think all is in order I get thrown on my ass again.
Last week’s day in a sentence (hosted by Illya‘s EVO Blogfolio) was actually a year in a sentence and it called for reflective sentences on the year that is about to end.
I left the call for sentences post open in my browser for a day or so. I’d stare at it, go away, stare at it again, go away again, until finally I typed:
Learning about what is important to me – lessons that never end!
Beavers don't build a lodge and they are done. It's constant – always building, adding and taking away – and necessary for survival. This picture and the lodge making story was found on Mon@rch's Nature Blog. Click image for source.
It always seems to be this time of year when I lose my focus. It’s run run run all the time with teaching. teaching. teaching. This year in particular – my days are long. very long. I leave my house at around 6am and sometimes don’t return until 13 or so hours later. My dogs are loving this schedule (not) as am I (again, not). At this time of year that means that my down time is all in darkness. Yuck. (And I am getting tired of telling this story over again year after year.)
For the past few weeks I have been an elastic ball of exhaustion, ready to snap apart at any noise, annoyance, divergence from plans. Not a good quality to have when a) I work with teenagers, b) I have 2 dogs and a cat who need more attention than I am giving them, and c) I am experiencing my first winter in my 100 year old home in the country. (stove pipe fell out of the wall last week, filling my home with smoke, on the same evening that my furnace ran out of oil, so I had to sleep with the windows open on a night with no heat in the house. Yesterday my pipes froze – apparently that can happen when you heat primarily with the (now-fixed) wood stove on really cold days. Really, this could be a funny movie if it were being filmed.) Oh, and d) I apparently have some health issues that my doctor wants me to check out in more detail over the holiday break.
I met with my principal just before leaving for the break on Friday and he pointed out that he was worried about me, that I need to know I can speak to him before I completely burn out. That I need to remember to take care of myself. On Sunday morning my boyfriend held me in his arms during a bit of a …moment… after I had put the dogs into the veranda because they were driving me crazy running around the house and soon after noticed they had torn up a garbage bag I had forgotten to bring outside and decorated said veranda with its contents.
So, what the heck have I learned this time that is important to me? Well, for one that it’s a continuous process this focusing on what is important shtick. That’s what they call keeping balance in some parts. One thing I sure learned in the past few days is that keeping people in the picture rather than on the sidelines helps everything else fall into place. When I was in my boyfriend’s arms he didn’t say anything but just let me blubber for a while until I found the words I needed to say. I get so frustrated with myself when I set myself up to fail, when I make choices that make my life harder than it needs to be –> Working and living so far apart. Putting the garbage bag in the veranda instead of directly out to the garbage bin. Not learning about the ins and outs of heating an old house in the winter. Not approaching people for help before I get overwhelmed.
I may be a little bit hard on myself as well. Maybe. A little. The little upsets and failures are being measured by my out-of-whack yard stick for success. I was teased this weekend about being slightly ticked off that I received an overall mark of 97 in the course I took this semester.
Time to reevaluate choices, create some of that hope for the future I’m always talking about. But guess what? I’m thinking of actually letting other people help me out with that. Novel idea, I know.
