Sixth Grade Teachers

In my trek across the country (Boston to Atlanta, Atlanta to LA) today and my flight across the Pacific (LA to Kahului) tonight, I will have plenty of time to process my experience at BLC this week. I feel encouraged by what we are beginning to do at Trinity with education and technology. Obviously, there’s so much more out there, but the sixth grade team of teachers and students jumped in last year with enthusiasm and courage. And, as a result, we have great stories of success.

In Ewan McIntosh’s Keynote, he asked us to think about three questions as the week progressed. I wanted to include them here, as I’ll try to address them in my mind and hopefully in writing over the course of the next couple of weeks.

1)      What simple tools make learning become remarkable?

2)      How can one create a shared awareness of learning goals?

3)      What changes could be made to get small, passionate groups creating themselves?

Overall, I am most excited about the connections I made this week. I already feel as though my network is expanding, and I am anxious to learn more about teaching and technology from people like John Davitt, Laura Deisley, Clarence Fisher, Darren Kuropatwa, Ewan McIntosh, Brian Mull, Bob Sprankle, and others.

I am challenged by so many of the things I learned as well. Alan November’s presentation (and book) on Webliteracy has inspired me to teach the grammar of the internet with the same gusto that I teach English grammar (and sentence diagramming!). Jessica Flannery’s KIVA presentation on Wednesday caused me to re-think the way I teach my students about community service. I see the implications of this new approach directly affecting the focus of my explorations class next year. My conversation with John Davitt at lunch (as well as his presentation) inspired me to think about how my students can live in both the digital world and the real world. How can their writer’s notebooks, art sketchpads, and blogs be combined to capture and reflect on the world as they see it? 

Although it’s tempting to broaden the scope of my thoughts to Trinity School and the total sixth grade experience, I know that I need to think about 2246 and my class of sixteen students. I want to make a measurable difference by changing and shifting, not by adding. To do this, I have a lot more thinking to do…

Luckily, I have many miles to travel before I sleep…

This entry was posted on Friday, July 18th, 2008 at 1:26 pm and is filed under BLC08, Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.