Wow!!! It Has Been A Long Time:


Did you ever wonder what makes an individual lose interest in something? Is it laziness, boredom, apathy, or exhaustion? Recently, a light bulb burned out in a stairwell in my house. Now, if you knew the layout of my house, that particular light bulb plays a very important role in illuminating a safe passage down a flight of stairs. I don't know what it was, but that bulb took several days to change. I was a pretty big light bulb but I am a pretty handy guy. I can't help but feel my absence as a blogger for nearly a month, has somehow diminished my worthiness to participate in this community. I almost feel like the athlete who struggles back to a comfort zone with their teammates, after having experienced an injury. I know it sound ridiculous, after all, no one is out there keeping track. But I just feel odd and cannot quite put my finger on it. Maybe it is the pace of change, or it's that I am finding the echo chamber reverberating back the same message, and I sometimes feels like I am back in a faculty lounge.

There has been a great deal of discussion regarding what to call this educational shift and how slow it seems change is occurring. Maybe I am reading this incorrectly, but that is what I've discovered. I cannot begin to describe the personal and professional transformation I have experienced as a result of having been introduced to all of these technologies last July. I share with many of you the observations as to how my individual learning styles and capacities have changed, all for the better, since discovering the power of web based tools. I cannot help but feel transformed. But I've stopped writing and I am not quite sure why. I don't believe that it's from a decline in my enthusiasm. Anyone looking for me between the hours of 8:30 p.m. and 11:30 p.m., can easily find me reading my bloglines, and discovering new ideas, in the comfort of my family room. Maybe I am becoming absorbed in transforming my own little world (room 208), or that I am avoiding the grand fight of transforming the educational culture. For what ever reason, I have stopped writing and wonder if something is broken. I have missed it tremendously, but I feel like there may not be anything of significance to say. I thought that getting back into the game a little, and shacking off the dust, may be all I need.

On one particular night, around 11:30 p.m., I read a post by Clay Burell, a neat and creative idea regarding students developing podcasts for history. I went to bed, and tossed and turned for nearly an hour. I had a freight train of ideas running through my head, and there's not a lot of room up there. My wife nearly asked me to sleep in the family room. The other day, while washing the dishes in my kitchen, I began to become so absorbed with the development of a collaborative project using diigo, I washed the same glass for nearly five minutes. In preparing for an upcoming conference, I realized the irony of the 41 slide power point presentation I had developed to inform the participants of these tools. I feel like I am turning into the Richard Dreyfus character in the 1977 classic Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You know the guy who builds the model of Devil's Tower in his living room.

Why do we begin to complicate our lives by taking on the challenges such as educational reform Why should a 39 year old married father of four begin a professional transformation that redefines priorities and diminishes time on the ski slopes? In a skype conversation with another blogger, I explained the sleepless nights, the obsessive hunger to clear my bloglines, and the hypnotic control these technologies have over my creative energies. He laughed and stated "you appear to be headed on to bigger and better things." I don't know if that is necessarily true, I don't have my administration degree, and I have some pretty deep roots in the district I teach.

What I began to realize was, I, like so many of you, have the opportunity to be a part of something truly historical, and much bigger than any one of us. When I graduated from St. Bonaventure University in the spring of 1989, I never envisioned a world like the one we live in today. I never envisioned the profession of education, being as much in a state of future flux as it is today. No one knows for the first time, what the future holds for education. Will the institution of education as we know it today, still be in existence 5, 10, 20 years from now? Will the school two miles from my home, remain the heart of the community I live in, or will that change as well. I don't know what the future holds, but I know that I am very excited to be a part of it. When I was ten, I got a chance to be one of the first guys from my neighborhood to ride a new roller coaster at the regional amusement park. I didn't sit in the front seat, nor was I in the back. I probably sat about four rows from the front. I definitely enjoyed the ride, and took a little pride in being so far toward the front and one of the first to ride.

Maybe, as a teacher, I am experiencing a close encounter of the professional kind, riding an educational roller coaster of change. All I need to do is figure out where to sit, and what to build.

Our superintendent, Neil Rochelle shares with us several thoughts on a daily basis. His emails usually includes this poem from Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Don't waste life in doubts and fears; spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour's duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow."

Maybe it's as simple as that.