writing in the open spaces

After dumping all my reads last year and starting again, my Google Reader is now up to 249 blogs/newspapers/feeds. It’s almost too much to keep me from working.

I am fairly well focused, but I am learning how easily distracted I am. I thought of it this morning during the ETT podcast, when Vinnie Vrotney was talking about the value of the iPad–only being able to use one app at a time. I thought of it an hour ago when I was skimming my feeds again, just to “be sure” I hadn’t missed anything important. And I paused once more when I started to go to Twitter instead of the PLP Newsletter I had intended to work on!

Geesh. And they worry about students multi-tasking.

 

I don’t like to complain.

But ever since I started working from home, my house has been turned upside down. We decided to tear off a porch, remove a wall, and extend the living room. That means, of course, all the furniture is piled in the dining room, where I’m trying to work.

The eight week project has turned into 12, and it’s still going.

Oh, I’ll love it when it’s finished. But in the meantime, my neck hurts from sitting at the wrong angle, the paint fumes are making me hallucinate, and the dust causes me to sneeze constantly.

If I start writing weird posts in the next few days, you’ll know what’s going on. Just thought I’d give you a heads up.

image credit: By bucklava

 

Most of  you know, I’m working from home these days (love it). Today I needed to visit my former school to help a colleague with some HP netbooks I had left for them to use. My friend and I chatted while I was on the phone with tech support (two hours later, we finally had an image restore file), and I was reminded how powerful one’s mindset is.

This friend epitomizes one who is willing and eager to learn, not afraid to try new things. She came into her position knowing absolutely nothing about technology or computers, yet this week she is THE support person as the network administrator is out of town. She’s jumping in, asking questions, trying techniques on her own–and learning. With a big smile on her face, she explained how she was able to set up some new laptops and get them on the network.

“Everything keeps changing,” she said about our new software. “But that’s ok because I can usually figure it out.”

Carol Dweck’s book Mindset changed my own thinking about intelligence and talent. And from her website, this quote truly resonates:

Benjamin Barber, an eminent sociologist, once said, “I don’t divide the world into the weak and the strong, or the successes and the failures… I divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.”

My friend is a learner with what Dweck calls a “growth mindset,” and it was so cool to see such confidence and enthusiasm. According to Dweck,

People with a growth mindset are also constantly monitoring what’s going on, but their internal monologue is not about judging themselves and others in this way. Certainly they’re sensitive to positive and negative information, but they’re attuned to its implications for learning and constructive action: What can I learn from this? How can I improve?

If only we could all frame our learning in this way.

 

I’ve been using Evernote for a while now, but it seems to be the last place I think of to work/save/share. Though Google Docs is still where I write, I want to either make Evernote work for everything else or let it go.

Giving it one more shot, I’ll be following Ron as he shares his tips:

And I’ll let you know the results in a few weeks.

 

Or not.

My days blend together now that I work from home.

Sitting down to check my email can mean being captured by a tweet that sends me off to check on whether I should write a blog post or send an RT.. And suddenly I am deep in conversation about PLP or even more complicated–communication.

But I love using social media to learn. Who would have thought I’d be doing this now? At this point in my life?
And that’s the point, isn’t it? We don’t know where our lives will lead us. Rarely will our children have set paths before them, jobs they keep for 30 or 40 years.

For me, now, it’s the balance. Today David and I took a walk downtown to look for furniture for our new room. Egads, the mess I am living in right now is driving me crazy. I have piles surrounding me as I wait for the painters to finish their work. But today it was more about clearing my head than my mess. And the weather was gorgeous.

And as much as I love connecting and chatting online, our visit to The Griffin today was timely. No, we didn’t find the furniture we need, but I did find a great book to help me focus on my writing. And the iced soy chai wasn’t bad either.

So, another day where work and life blend into a happy dance.

 

Recent online conversations about rules and pencils have me thinking about my own teaching career.

My assigned summer reading before college was Ivan Illich’s book, Deschooling Society. That was 1970.

Before I graduated, I had read John Holt, Jonathan Kozol, and Herbert Kohl. As I moved into the classroom, these people shaped me as a teacher. At least in my head.

Yet, the system often wore me down.

That’s not an excuse, though I know it sounds like one. Fitting a square peg in a round hole isn’t easy. So I struggled to find ways to move around the structure and give choice to my curriculum and flexibility to my teaching style.

But now as I look back, I see that I was afraid. I was fearful of breaking rules, coloring outside the lines, of teaching in ways I knew would most benefit my kids.

Mostly, I felt alone. That was before the internet. Before learning communities. Before transparency. It was difficult to find like-minded people who shared my philosophy or desire to practice differently.

And then my world changed.

In 1986 I bought my first computer. A few years later, I began to use computers with students. A Mac to layout our school newspaper, a PC with PowerPoint to enable kids to create presentations, the text-based world wide web that allowed me to chat with someone in Switzerland one day. My teaching didn’t change overnight, and moving to an independent school did give me more flexibility. But having access to technology and the internet is what truly affected my teaching practice.

Jump forward to 2004, and suddenly I was blogging. And finding community. And support.

You know the rest of the story…because it is also your story. The connections have allowed us to find each other. Networking has enabled us to garner support for our “radical” ideas (tell that to Ivan).

My last year in the classroom helped me change even more.

A conversation with my cousin this summer validated my feelings. Her children attended a high school that requires no set curriculum and no grades. This is my niece’s second year in college. And although she struggled somewhat to convince colleges of her merit (she had no traditional AP courses or typical transcript from a standard school), her personal interview and portfolio sold her colleges and gained her acceptance into her school of choice. Her recent Facebook status read: I LOVE my college.

Freedom to learn works. Illich said this in 1971:

educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring

Pretty amazing, huh?

We are better together. That’s the mission statement for Powerful Learning Practice, the folks I’m working with now. It’s like I’ve come full circle.

 

So, this working from home means I sit a lot.

And it hasn’t been good for my back. The egg timer helps, though. Every 20 or 30 minutes, the ding ding reminds me to get up and stretch. Some days that’s easier than others. Today, I had so much to read, I ignored the signal.

From my Google Reader:

• Will’s post about kids heading back to school and finding….the same old thing. I wondered how parents reacted to my “back to school” presentation/discussion when I told them their kids would be blogging, skyping, working in groups, and having much choice in their writing. Ha, they were probably on edge as much as fellow 2.0 parents are to see chairs in a row!
• Nine Study Tips: We keep learning about how to do this well. Why don’t we all do it?
• The Line of the Week: I keep thinking about this one
• And this one, which I’ll return to again. The changing nature of authorship. I left a comment on Dean Shareski’s blog sharing similar thoughts. Writing doesn’t matter until there is an audience…and this post discusses how authorship is changing.

As the article suggests, we are nearing an age of nearly universal authorship. The question that remains is how educators and educational systems – the creators of those hated classroom essays – can adapt to this change. Currently, researchers are exploring how students’ out-of-classroom writing, such as with fanfictions, can be used to help them learn. However, educators need to also address the continuing role of shame that is part of our discussions of young persons’ writing.

Shame? I’ll let you go read the rest of the post to learn more about that. Much to think about….

image: By MiikaS

 

I’ve been reading Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness blog for a couple of years now on and off. Today she listed 5 questions you should ask yourself if you’re making a tough decision. She always seems to get to the heart of the matter:

• What am I waiting for?
• What would I do if I weren’t scared?
• What steps would make things easier?
• What would I do if I had all the time and money in the world?
• What is the worst, and the best, that could happen?

Reminds me a little of Chris Lehmann’s question: What’s the worst consequence of our best idea?

Questions keep me learning.

 

I love the graphics in this simple slide set from Sacha. Take a look: