Re-entering the Fray

We haven't been to the beach as a family yet, as Audrey has not been able to travel much, but now that everything has settled, we were able to get away and spend the week in Cape May. As much as we all praise the ability to get away and recharge, I still have a little bit of Dan Meyer in me in that I sometimes feel that I could work around the clock. Maybe it's the changing definition of learning that has overtaken me, or that the way I approach learning is so powerfully informal. Regardless, coming back into this arena after taking several days away is intimidating on so many levels.

As this summer began, I had such high hopes for what would come at the start of this year. Now as the summer ends, I am seriously questioning what should be the top priority for me this year: increasing access for teachers in a non-threatening way, embedded technology in curriculum design, pushing through personal learning networks a la Karl Fisch, changing the way teachers approach their role in the classroom, or just trying to keep everyone in sync with all of the recent changes to our district network.

In the limited time that I have spent over the last day or so running through some posts from people like Jen Dorman, there is something to be said for a sequential process for either students or teachers to go through. This next week poses some really enormous challenges for me, both professional and personal, and one thing I want to hammer out before I begin the deluge that is the first week of school, are measurable progress indicators. I want to sit down at certain points, set up before the year begins, and assess what has gone on, and what needs to change. It is all too easy to get caught up in the small details of our work and suddenly find ourselves in December.

This is general and vague, but it is all I can muster after having been out of the loop for a week.