Reflections of an Educator

Yesterday I did a brief walk-through of a teacher's classroom. It was a short slice of a class, only about 5 to 10 minutes. The students were engaged, good questions posed, and the teacher did a great job of stressing the essential questions of the class. As I left the classroom I thought to myself, "That was a good class," and continued on with the rest of my day.   I closed out my day a few hours later, and when I came in to school this morning, the teacher popped into my office and said "I just wanted to connect with you about your observation yesterday."  I was so glad that the teacher wanted to connect with me, debrief, and reflect about the lesson that I observed – this is a lead learner's dream!  I was surprised, however – because I had only popped in quickly to the teacher's classroom, but the teacher was looking for some feedback and wanted to discuss some thoughts. I underestimated how important it is to have the conversation - even a quick one...

One of the PLNs of which I am a part, BFC530, has been exploring the ins and outs of blogging in the education world. Although I've been blogging for a while now (about six years or so), The BFC530 morning Twitter chat and voxer group has really been pushing my thinking and inspired me to start blogging more regularly.  Thanks to some PLN members' ideas, I've started using technology to be able to fit it into my day. I have found that my morning and evening commute has been transformed from NPR and rocking out to some music to listening to colleagues from around the world discuss professional education topics and push my thinking, making me a better educator.  I have replaced the radio with educators' thoughts, ideas, questions, and blogs that are being read to me over my car speakers (that last part is for you, Massachusetts State Police - don't worry, I'm not texting and driving or reading and driving). So why do I blog? Someone in the PLN suggested that one b...

On Friday, I had an awesome opportunity to reconnect with a group of students as teacher.  A wonderful teacher was absent on Friday, and asked me to roll out GAFE to her E block class of students.  (Once I found computer lab space...) I jumped on that opportunity immediately!  What a great opportunity. I try to be as present as possible in classrooms, working to be a present, active member of the amazing learning community at Manchester-Essex Middle School.  When I walked into Mrs. W 's classroom, I got a hearty "Hello, Mr. G.!"  This was a great welcome in and of itself.  I announced to students, "OK guys, I'm going to teach your class today," students said, "wait - you are going to teach us?!"  It was an interesting dichotomy - I like to think of myself as lead learner and as an educator at heart - I list "educator" on my taxes, I tell people I am an educator when I meet them, but students were confused: the principal  was going to b...

WOW - I just participated in a super-charged #satchat about maker spaces.  Folks came to the table with varying readiness levels about what a maker space is, can be, should be, could be.  After 90 minutes of engaging in conversation, expanding my own background knowledge and hearing about different models of maker spaces, I've created a conglomerate definition of maker space characteristics.  Maker spaces: Are both physical space and a philosophy; Are embedded into classrooms, clubs, in school and out of school; Provide authentic problems; Can contain materials of any size, shape and dimension; Encourage Innovation; Build constructivist learning and thinking; Are interest-based; Are collaborative; Are fun! Help students discover passions; Focus on creation; Encourage risk-taking, being wrong and failing; Develop problem-solvers; Promote collaboration. There was a lot of talk about having a Maker Team to guide vision and philosophy in one's school (than...