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Showing posts from October, 2014

Connecting Comes in Many Forms

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Photo credit: http://goo.gl/2Ssfhp This past weekend I did something I honestly don't remember the last time doing: I used vacation time in the middle of the school year!  My son had a four day weekend.  Our school had a three day weekend.  I took a four day weekend.  And WOW!  What a difference it made. We can always make an argument for staying at the office another hour.  We can always justify working into the wee-hours to catch up on those last few emails or finalize tomorrow's meeting.  But that can take a toll.  And it was taking a toll.  I was not as productive, tasks were taking twice as long, things were falling off my radar, causing the infamous "fire drill" every day.  On top of that my son was making comments like: "I wish you would just go back to teaching so I could spend more time with you."  Ugh!  How do you argue with that one? So this weekend I made a conscious decision to lighten up on my connecting with colleagues and my PLN and i

Putting Failure in the Spotlight

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Photo credit: Flickr http://goo.gl/mI8NLQ This past weekend I attended  IntegratEDSF (#isf14).  Halfway through my morning session on day 1, my mind was already swimming with new ideas.  Then came the Key Note and look out, full mind explosion!  iSF is a very different type of conference as you only have two sessions in a day that are designed to be workshops rather than an hour of information coming fast and furious and then on to the next session with no time to process in between.  This was my first time attending iSF and I I will be back.  But that isn't why I am writing this post.  I am writing this post to reflect on some of the lessons I learned over the weekend... Failure to Communicate My morning session was facilitated by Pernille Ripp (@pernilleripp) author  and teacher extraordinaire.  The session was entitled: The Empowered School.  It was a fantastic conversation that caused me to think about when I say "yes" vs. when I say "no".  In additio