Johnston's Journal

Steve Jobs, the inventor and co-founder of Apple Inc., once said the following when speaking to students graduating from Stanford University in California:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life…Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.”

This quote caught my attention because it reminds me of myself.  Some of you may be surprised to hear that I graduated from college with a degree in Business and worked in a big office building in Washington, DC for a year and a half after college.  As I’m sure you’ve noticed, I left that world behind to become a teacher.  However, my switch to teaching was not out of the blue.  When I was in 5th grade, if you’d asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said I wanted to be a teacher.  I always wanted to be a teacher.  I made my sister play school all the time when we were growing up, and I actually created homework and tests for her to complete.  I volunteered all through college in an elementary school because I wanted to, not because I had to.  As Steve Jobs said in the quote above, it seems my heart always knew what I truly wanted to become, but it took me a few years to follow my heart and listen to my inner voice.   

What does this quote mean to you?  What lines catch your attention the most? Do you agree that your heart and intuition already know what you truly want to become?  Why or why not?  What do you think keeps a lot of us, like me, from following our hearts? If you already know what you want to become, what is it and why do you believe it’s what you’re meant to do?

I have to be honest - I haven’t been very good about blogging on a regular basis so far this year, and I’d made the  assumption that since I hadn’t, my students probably hadn’t either.  I consider myself a pretty tech-savvy person, and I genuinely enjoy exploring the digital tools available to us courtesy of the World Wide Web, but somehow, my blog had been relegated to the back burner.  In an attempt to improve my blogging, I attended a meeting this afternoon that was designed to help some of us explore the blogosphere and consider possible uses for our own blogs.  It only took about 10 minutes in the meeting for my inner child to fully emerge, and I found myself hyper-focused on perusing the 10 pages of themes I could choose for my background, playing with blog colors, and adding widgets to my sidebar as I prepared my blog for my world audience!   

As I formatted and played with my now new and improved sidebar, I discovered the blogroll widget which allowed me to list links to blogs that I want to share.  With my new found enthusiasm for blogging, I naturally decided I needed to list the links to all of my students’ blogs so we could easily navigate from one blog to the next.  As I started linking to my students’ blogs, I quickly realized that my enthusiasm for blogging was already shared by many of my students.  Quite frankly, I expected to see very little beyond the “About” me page on my students’ blogs since we hadn’t used them much since completing that one section.  However, not only have some of them personalized their blogs the same way I did, there are a few students who’ve clearly emerged as avid bloggers. 

Sellers has a blog that blew me away.  I see his personality in his background choices, and his interests and intellect in his posts.  As expected, he’s written about school activities like Camp Will-a-Way and his Mesopotamia project, but he’s also taken his blog to the next level with personal posts offering fun facts and trivia questions, and a post recognizing and reporting on Steve Jobs’s death.  This is a student who is sharing what he learns both inside and outside of school, posting his thoughts, and posing questions for his school peers and the larger world audience.  Sellers is one of the students leading the 5th grade blogging revolution!

Why did I think that if I hadn’t been using the blogs regularly in the classroom, that the students wouldn’t be using them at home and on their own?  When I was in 5th grade, I didn’t have an online tool that would allow me to converse with the world, but I forget how much I would have relished the idea of being able to share my thoughts with my peers and have them respond.  Classroom discussion is often limited by time and curriculum, but our students are craving the chance to interact with their peers and their surroundings on a bigger stage.  I can’t wait to see what discussions we have next in our virtual classroom! 

In Chapters 12 and 13, Bud rides to Grand Rapids with Lefty Lewis and meets Herman E. Calloway.  After tricking Mr. Lewis into dropping him off at The Log Cabin without walking him inside, Bud approaches Mr. Calloway and tells him he’s his father.  How did Mr. Calloway react to Bud’s claim that he’s his father?  Why do you think he reacts this way?  How do his band mates react, and what does their reaction tell us about them?

Predict what you think will happen in the coming chapters.  What will happen with Bud and Herman E. Calloway at the restaurant, Sweet Pea? What path will Bud’s life take after eating this meal with Mr. Calloway and the band?  Respond below with thoughtful comments.  Make sure to read your classmates’ comments – they might start a good conversation!

Welcome to my class blog!  I’ll use this blog to share my thoughts with all of you.  There will also be times when I’ll post questions or comments about what we’re doing in Language Arts or Social Studies, and I’ll ask you to comment or respond to my posts.  Let’s get started!