Little Miss Geek

Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in the GEG Chicago Leadership Day at the new Goggle offices. We kicked off the day with some networking and team building -- it's always great to get to meet new people. Then we jumped right in working in teams to craft a mission statement for the GEG that would guide our work for the rest of the day. After several iterations we landed on "Empowering Educators to Innovate, Collaborate, and Inspire." From there we started the design thinking process around professional development and events that we could organize for the members of the GEG. Event ideas were voted on and people broke in to teams based on interest to begin planning. Overall the day was a huge success and I can't wait to see all of these plans come to fruition!

I have spent this summer, as I do every summer since becoming an educator, learning. I have expanded my learning by attending conferences, reading, attending edcamps, and having some really thought provoking conversations. Inevitably in every conference or conversation the notion of teachers' plates being full and not wanting to add anything to those plates arises. Original work "Korean BBQ Platter" by Pelican I agree that there is a lot being put on teachers at this time in education. I do not want to make things harder for teachers. I have in the past viewed my role as an instructional coach as helping teachers to balance their plates. I couldn't fix their plates, but I felt like I could help make things easier for them. I know that teachers have done a lot of rearranging and prioritizing of things to try and make their plates work. Frankly, I'm just tired of talking about full plates. I think it's time to do the dishes. Clear them off completely...

For a long time I have felt like I am at the edge of greatness. I try to surround myself with really smart people and big thinkers, hoping to soak up just a little of their awesome. I was around greatness, but just far enough away from the epicenter of greatness to not consider myself great (maybe just good-ish). I haven't really felt like anyone would care what I had to say or care about what I was doing. I currently have no less than 10 draft posts that I have written over the past couple months. Most of them are completely finished just waiting for me to hit the publish button. But something has been holding me back from sending them out for the whole world to see. For a while I had convinced myself that these posts that I had written weren't good enough or would not be well received. I spent today at #EdCampLdr Chicago, again surrounding myself with greatness. Overall it was a good day filled with thought provoking conversations. I started my afternoon in a session call...