Today marks the first official time I am in charge of the Day in the Sentence feature and I am happy to report that we have a lot of people submitting their words to our collective voice. My aim is to keep the feature running for now here at this site, but to eventually pass it off to the community of bloggers and have others guest-host the feature. I imagine our friend, The Reflective Teacher, would enjoy knowing that his idea can blossom into a community of teacher-writers who connect every week.
So here goes:
A new colleague, Cheryl Oaks (who led a great K12 Online presentation and has done some podcasting with me via a Ning site), writes, “My week in reflection: I’ve been blogging about web 2.0 tools, good ideas, ideas about how to get new people involved in 21st century tools, this week I blogged about a day in the life of a 7th grader with the 1-1 laptop, time to spread best practice in the classroom. Over and out , Cheryl Oakes”
Nancy is back in the classroom after a break and glad to be there, too, as she reports, “Back to work after a two-week sojourn and the kids are mighty happy to see me!”
Now, the holiday spirit can often bring up conflicting emotions, as the Mindful Teacher explains, “My room was filled with riotous costumes except for a couple of kids who didn’t participate — for one, it seemed to be a cultural issue; for the other, he couldn’t bear to be uncool even though he knew that being the only one out of a costume wasn’t cool either — besides wearing a bright orange shirt on Halloween is a giveaway that you think its important.”
Bud the Teacher may be missing the classroom a bit, as he writes, “I’m spending more time talking tech with administrators than teachers; I sure hope that is a good thing for teachers in the long run.”
My good friend, Lynn (with whom I am co-presenting a workshop at the upcoming National Writing Project), reminds us that chaos is always on the doorstep of the classroom. She reports, “As a writing teacher I want to be like my models—Nancy Atwell, for example—but, the best I was able to do this week was to dispose of 3 constantly disruptive students, and by sending them out, allowing a class a break from chaos and (what was for them) a descent into thirty minutes of writing.”
Bonnie, who is about to entire Conference Overload, writes, “This has been a peaceful week as I move into conference mode next week for two action-packed weeks that I will be sharing with great friends of collaboration but first I have to get rid of a head cold and get my guitar ready to go more public to get my hands to stop shaking when I play for the world beyond my safe walls of my home.”
Family is always important and Tim writes that he has been trying to keep hold of that center, writing, “The week unfolded with a reaffirmation of the things that truly matter in life- family and spouse–and I managed to keep my eye on that center throughout which I believe was reflected in my connections with my students.”
Mr. Murphy gives us just enough to wonder just what is going on in his classroom, as he reports, “Everything came crashing down, but in the meantime my students and I got to murder a man.”
The pranks of Halloween visit Cynthia this week, as she muses, “The week began as usual in Room 13–some arguments, some disruptions, but mostly cooperation and teaching and learning–then Wednesday morning came and brought with it an early Halloween prank (or perhaps an act of “revenge” from some disgruntled students)–a trashed room and a missing podium–making it rather difficult for my oral communication students and me to effectively deliver our speeches.”
The Big Game was on Delaine‘s mind. “Cross-town rivalry week kept the yearbook students and me busy with all the activities leading up to the big game tonight.”
We’d still like to know how your week went and so feel free to add your comments to this post and leave a blog address, too, as I try to create a web of contacts. And I hope you return next week with some more of your writing, and possibly podcasting your voice. Spread the word — build a community.
Peace (in reflection),
Kevin
