Celebrating Educators Update

When I started the Celebrating Educators series, I had hoped to have regular posts for a while; however, many educators are already stretched thin with various commitments and responsibilities, making it hard to write guest posts.

Nonetheless, I have been seeing examples of "Celebrating Educators" throughout various blogs, the NCTE listserv updates that frequently have teachers sharing their stories, and in the title of IRA's annual convention in the spring titled Celebrating Teaching.

Educators are working hard every day to make a difference in a range of levels - for individuals, classrooms, schools, districts... I continue to frequently feel energized and inspired by others in the field!

Remembering the Positive

This week was parent-teacher conferences, and the conference for my kindergartener really had me thinking about how much power teachers have in setting the tone in conferences and day to day life in the classroom. My daughter absolutely loves school. She could hardly wait to go to her conference, and she said, "I miss my teacher so much," as we were getting into the car.

Fall conferences are for going over goals, and my daughter's teacher had asked her what she thought she needed to work on in preparation for the conferences. However, before going straight to areas of improvement, her teacher remembered how vital it is to start with positives. I know that my daughter might not have understood every word her teacher said to us in English and Spanish during the conference but like Mari in Painted Words, I knew that she would be able to tell by the excitement in her voice and expressions that she was saying something positive about her. As such, my daughter kept on smiling and smiling.

Yes, we talked about areas to work on in the conference and about her current academic progress, but the tone continued to feel the same - supportive and a sense that she likes my daughter for who she is. My daughter left just as energized as when she walked through the door. At no point did it feel like negative, negative, negative...

The day after conferences I was reading through assignments that my pre-service teachers submitted when I came across a reading buddy assignment where students were supposed to discuss where they think their reading buddy falls on TESOL and state English Language Proficiency standards. I started to read one that had a paragraph starting out with the reading buddy's personality and highlighting the positives about her as a person before moving on to talk about language proficiency in different domains. This was not part of the requirement, yet, she included it anyway, and I thought, That's going to make all the difference in her interactions with kids and families.

Workshop Technology

My colleagues have been providing positive feedback about implementing workshop philosophy into their classrooms this year at the k-8 levels. The last couple of years I thought that an iPad might be perfect for conferring anecdotal records. An iPod Touch was too small and at times a laptop was too cumbersome. I was thrilled to find out that the teachers were going to get iPads, and shortly after I found out I heard about the Confer App from Jen Munnerlyn. I couldn't get my email open fast enough to share the idea with the teachers.

So much potential...

Teachers were also excited about the paper versions of Fountas and Pinnell's Prompting Guides in English and Spanish. One teacher realized that both are available through the App store as well (English and Spanish). I instantly loved the idea knowing that rather than carrying around the prompting guide teachers would be able to utilize the iPad both to record notes and access the prompting guide when needed. The school will still have the paper copies for instructional assistants who do not have access to iPads. With technology there is always so much to explore.

Celebrating Educators Recap and Reflections

Each week of Celebrating Educators has inspired me and gave me a lot to reflect on. I wanted to reflect on some of the many lines that stood out to me from the first three posts.

"I loved every minute of my time at Lewis and Clark College and read the writing of so many people who helped me understand this complex thing called teaching." - Penny Kittle
*One of my most favorite aspects of going back to school for an Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction was the chance to learn alongside other professionals from the student side. Prior to starting my program, I had been narrowing in on my specific school and content area, and it has been so enriching to maintain that focus while also zooming back out to broader issues in education. Through reading, writing, and discussing, we learn so much!


"Today I keep a notebook and write in it most days, I read like a wolf eats, as Gary Paulson says, and I still love teaching." - Penny Kittle
*Penny Kittle always has powerful statements that energize me as a teacher.


"For me, this career has been about risk taking and reflection. I have been given opportunities and I often didn't think I knew enough to take them, but I did. I learned along the way, challenging myself to read and think about this work in complex ways and never settle for less than reaching every student. Teachers are powerful. I work every day to use that power well." - Penny Kittle
*This year is about taking risk for me, as well as an opportunity to really reflect on my career as an educator so far. It's never easy to step outside of our comfort zones, but I love Penny's positive attitude toward learning from new contexts.

"While this is accurate, telling the story in this manner does not describe the joys that I find in being an educator; new experiences are available to me as both a teacher and learner, so long as I'm willing to avail myself of them." - Troy Hicks
*Troy Hicks reminded me of the role of being a teacher and a learner, as well as focusing on ourselves as writers in order to be a better teacher of writing. I have enjoyed writing more than ever in the last couple of years and utilize the concepts I have taught my students to continually develop as a writer myself as well. This statement also reminded me of how there is always so much more beyond the surface level with teaching, so much rich description.


"Writing has the power to change lives [...] We teach kids to become writers, and in doing so we teach them to become themselves." - Troy Hicks
*The power of writing never fails to amaze me - so much potential. Being able to experience writing alongside my students and to watch them make sense of their worlds through writing has been fascinating and so fulfilling. 


"When I view myself as a leader, I can only see myself in relation to those colleagues that surround me. As I do what I can to teach them, to inspire them, and to help them become better teachers, I become a better teacher myself." - Troy Hicks
*I have been lucky to be surrounded with inspiring colleagues throughout my teaching career. Being able to collaborate within my school, on-line, or in classrooms is always energizing.

"There really weren’t many reading teachers around then.  And there had never been a program before for the 7^th graders to have a reading class, thus there was no curriculum for me to follow. Nothing." - Pat Johnson
*This quote reminds me that so much of being an educator entails being determined and motivated to consider what we know in relation to our present contexts and then go through many cycles of reflection and discussion in order to continually build our capacities as teachers with a sharp focus on students and their needs. There's rarely (if ever) easy answers. Yet, it is essential to allow for this time to grow and develop, rather than pushing for an emphasis on programs vs. teachers as professionals.


"I ran a tutoring clinic in my home, and I taught myself a lot about teaching kids to read by watching one kid at a time." - Pat Johnson
*One kid at a time - I have learned so much as a parent being able to closely observe my girls and their literacy development. It informs me as a teacher, as well as my students helping me grow as a parent. I love the range of data sources available through writer's workshop - conferring, comments in discussions, writing samples... So much to learn from each individual student.


"Because I know it’s NOT possible for every person to get trained in Reading Recovery, I constantly think,  “How can I help? What is it from my new understandings that I could share with other teachers?” And each year since then – through all my series of workshops at schools, through my LLG (Literacy Learning Groups that I did with Title I teachers for 3 years), through my graduate classes at George Mason University, through my two books (One Child at a Time and Catching Readers Before They Fall) – each year I try to find ways to say it better." -Pat Johnson
*Once again, the vital role of collaboration comes through. Each of us has the power to contribute to a collective discussion and understanding about content, students, and teaching. I love Pat's wording focusing on constant refining.

As educators we are on a constant journey. Where will it take us next? 

Celebrating Educators: Pat Johnson

Pat Johnson and Katie Keier's Catching Readers Before They Fall was released at a perfect time last year as I was trying to learn more about supporting my daughter's reading development. Since Johnson is a Reading Recovery-trained teacher and often mentioned her experiences and learning as a result of it, the book also piqued my interest about Reading Recovery. When I heard that the two authors had a blog by the same name as their book, I instantly added it to my blog roll so that I would make sure to check in with each new post. I always learn so much from their thought provoking posts. I am pleased to have Pat Johnson as the third guest writer for the Celebrating Educators series, sharing about passion in education. I love that her post gives glimpses into the recent history of literacy in the United States. 

While searching the newspaper one day for an obituary of someone I knew, I accidently came across this one of a woman musician who had lived in Washington, D. C. The woman played the harpsichord, the violin, and jazz piano.  Here’s part of what it said about her, “Her passion was teaching music to young children, toddlers and kindergartners. She was affectionately known as Ms. Mara, the Music Lady. Her pupils danced to the Gypsy Kings, learned about new instruments and sang nursery rhymes.”  Her passion…I loved that.  I loved the way she combined her two passions of teaching young children and music.

That idea of PASSION really spoke to me.  I’m worried about where all the passion for teaching has gone these days.  I see so much discouragement, frustration, or just plain lack of excitement about teaching. New teachers are leaving the profession by an alarming rate.  Whether the cause is the testing craziness, or the leveling frenzy, or the national standards, or the overwhelming curriculum – whatever the reason for it, I thought I’d write about passion in hopes of bringing some of it back. 

I have had ONE PASSION for the past 13 years.  And that is… to help and support as many teachers as I can to learn about a reading processing system so that they can better understand how to support the struggling readers in their classrooms.   But this hasn’t always been my passion.  In fact, maybe it takes a large part of your career to come to your own passion clearly.  So take a walk down Memory Lane with me, if you will, and although I’ll write mostly about my own journey it may still ring true for what’s been going on around the country.

I graduated from Douglass College, part of Rutgers University in NJ in 1972.  At that time there were about a gazillion baby boomers also graduating college and many of them were teachers.  Alas, there were no jobs.  AND to make things worse, my degree was in teaching English, k-12, not a degree for elementary school. I landed up taking a job as a 7^th grade Reading Teacher in a Junior High an hour from my home. 

There really weren’t many reading teachers around then.  And there had never been a program before for the 7^th graders to have a reading class, thus there was no curriculum for me to follow. Nothing.  They had an English teacher – who did grammar teaching, diagramming sentences, and the 5 paragraph essay – but the school was finding that many of the kids were not strong readers.  The principal asked me to sign up for a Reading class at a local university graduate program and when I agreed, I got the job. That’s how I accidently began going for a masters degree to become a reading specialist. 

 At the junior high I had 6 classes a day with 30 students in each class, and there was quite a range of reading ability in every group.  I was handed some workbooks that included pages on synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, prefixes, suffixes, main idea, draw conclusions, fact and opinion, and so on.

I had no idea what to teach, and I soon discovered neither did anyone else.  I went across the hall one day and asked the English teacher (who had been teaching for about half a century), “Is there something else I should be doing besides these workbooks?” She proceeded to explain to me about long and short vowels and suggested I might start there.

Somehow I didn’t think that was what these kids needed.  I kept thinking, “Hmmmm…. a reading class…maybe they should be reading! Reading real books!” I asked the principal for a little more money and bought tons of paperback books. I remember one was Sounder and another was Mr. and Mrs. Bojo Jones – (about teenage pregnancy, believe it or not.)  I found a book called “Hooked on Books” published in 1969 (instead of hooked on phonics). I set up, as best I could, an individualized reading program. I spent that year trying to get kids turned onto reading.  

Was my eye on struggling readers yet?  

Not really.  If I had a passion at all back then it was about surviving each day.  And for any of you who are brand new teachers I’m sure you can relate! 

My next three years followed along a similar path. I had moved to the DC area, got a job teaching 6^th graders this time. Six classes a day, thirty kids in each, a range of abilities once again.

 My memories of my first 4 years of teaching were not very happy ones.  I barely survived each day.  Discouraged by my chosen career I decided to stay home when my first child was born. I stayed home for 8 years until my youngest was in first grade.  I still had a passion for teaching, but I wanted to be good at it.  I didn’t just want to go through the motions of giving assignments, marking papers, and giving grades. While I was home I did two things. First, I finished up my Masters in Reading and while doing so I read all kinds of professional books about teaching reading.  Secondly, I ran a tutoring clinic in my home, and I taught myself a lot about teaching kids to read by watching one kid at a time.  In my clinic I kept getting  younger and younger students– and loving it.  And I knew, when I went back to work, I was going back to elementary school.  I had found my niche.

Along comes the 1985 school year, we were living in VA, and I landed my first job as a Reading Specialist in an elementary school. That was right around the time that Don Graves published his book Writing:  Children and Teachers at Work.  Reading teachers were busy helping classroom teachers develop authentic writing workshops.  It was a most exciting time to be a young reading teacher because we were among the ones trying to figure it all out. And we were doing it WITHOUT the help that exists today.  We had none of the work of Ralph Fletcher, Katie Wood Ray, Carl Anderson, or Georgia Heard.  The Lucy Calkins kits didn’t exist and Giacobbe and Horn had not done their work with writing in kindergarten yet. We only had Graves, Lucy Calkins, and Shelley Harwayne at the very beginnings of their research.  (And of course, Nancie Atwell’s In the Middle.) Their work was brand new.  But the excitement they shared was invigorating. 

Back then, Don Graves, Lucy Calkins, and Shelley Harwayne were the most inspiring speakers anyone could have heard. I can still hear Graves’ unique voice.  I bet if you closed your eyes some of you can too. And we are all so sorry he’s no longer with us.  But we were so lucky to work in this big county of Fairfax, Virginia, because they could afford to bring these speakers in.  I heard Don, Lucy, and Shelley speak many times.  And afterwards I’d go out to dinner with friends and we’d be so fired up.  We couldn’t wait to get back to classrooms to help teachers with new ideas.  It was all so new and classroom teachers had so many questions.  Now don’t get me wrong.  Many times we bumped up against resistance --- teachers who wanted to hold onto their grammar books and spelling books and not do writing workshop at all.  It was a challenge, but we welcomed it.  We had a passion for all this new understanding. 

 So was my eye on struggling readers yet?  

No, I was very busy with writing workshops! And besides that, the schools I worked at had Title I Reading Teachers who were in charge of teaching all the struggling readers. (Isn’t it interesting how easy it is to say that struggling readers are someone else’s job?)

What was going on in reading at that time, in the mid 80’s and early 90’s?  Well first off there was the appearance of Big Books and Shared Reading in primary grades.  All of that was based on the work of Don Holdaway.  But, again, schools didn’t have the wealth of wonderful Big Books to choose from that exist today.  Each school was lucky if they had 10-12 to share among many classrooms.

Also, in reading, the Whole Language approach to reading and writing was taking shape in classrooms in my county and all across the country. Ken and Yetta Goodman, Frank Smith, Regie Routman and several others helped Whole Language to flourish in the U.S.  Teachers began moving away from only using a basal, to using real books in the classrooms.  I read children’s literature like there was no tomorrow. I was passionate about Whole Language because it came with an aspect of ‘turning kids on’ to books and into lifelong readers, writers, and learners. Whole Language pushed for bringing enjoyment of reading into classrooms and encouraged teachers to support children as they made their own choices, as they read authentic texts instead of basals and workbook pages, and as kids wrote for real purposes.  And it was fun!!!

There was no talk of Guided Reading yet, no Interactive Writing, and no leveled sets of books in classrooms. Because teachers wanted to know how to work with kids who were reading their own books, my work headed in that direction.  We developed many generic ways to respond to texts – we had response logs and response activities coming out our ears! Perhaps many of you can remember those days.

Was my eye on struggling readers yet? 

 No, but we’re getting closer.  I was reading children’s literature like crazy and I was trying to get teachers to match children to books better as a way of motivating them.  In fact, talk of motivation was big back then, and I’m embarrassed to say I even jumped on the reading incentive bandwagon --- reading for pizzas or ice cream parties and balloon launches.  I quickly realized the error of my ways and saw the problems and the dangers of these incentive programs.  Now I abhor those and want to support children in learning to read for intrinsic purposes. I always remember an article that came out back then titled something like “Are we raising readers, or just fat kids?”

But let’s get back to Whole Language.  I won’t go into the details of the misunderstandings of the WL movement, how the media played a role in destroying it, but soon it became a dirty word in our county and elsewhere.  Whole Language gave way to a Balanced Literacy Approach to reading and writing.  And we began to understand the different contexts of a comprehensive balanced classroom that included Reading Aloud, Shared Demonstrations, Guided Reading, and Independent Reading.  In writing it also meant modeling writing, shared or interactive writing, and independent writing time.

By the time that Balanced Literacy was in full swing, I had moved to a different school in my county and stayed there for seven years.  This school had a very diverse population and we had a much larger group of kids who were struggling with reading.  Fountas and Pinnell’s work was becoming very popular; they had put out their first book about Guided Reading and we were all taking note of how we could actually teach kids in K-2 better.  We knew we needed more early intervention and to give all students a better, stronger start.  We thought,  “Why wait until 3-4 grades when they were totally frustrated and then test them and place them in LD programs?  Wasn’t there something we could do to help more kids, especially in grade 1?”  As an answer, our county implemented a low student/teacher ratio (15:1) in grade one, but required teachers to take a “Beginning reading strategies” class.  The idea behind this was: “You don’t just get less kids.  You have to be doing something different. You have to better meet the needs of individual learners!”  

Around this same time Reading Recovery had also come to the county  (1986) and some reading teachers were getting trained. Our county was actually the second site in the U. S. after Ohio to begin training RR teachers.  When it began it actually snuck in very quietly.  No one knew too much about it. Little by little a few more teachers were trained. I was a bit skeptical about it at first but only because of my ignorance.  The training for it was so intense that those who were trained just didn’t feel like they could share any of it with others who were not trained.  Many of us used to tease that there was a ‘secret handshake’ and only those trained knew it.

But I was reading more and more about guided reading, about early intervention, and about struggling readers needing to build their own reading processing system. I facilitated countless Teachers-as-Readers groups, reading and discussing professional books together, learning more about running records, about guided reading, about leveled texts, about teaching for strategies, and so on. I believed strongly back then as I do now that the way to support teachers is through long-term staff development – slow change over time is the best way.  Eventually, around 1994, I was Reading Recovery trained. Woo Hoo, I got my Reading Recovery tattoo and learned the secret handshake!

All kidding aside, Reading Recovery changed my world!  Now I look back and wonder, “How could I have called myself a reading teacher for those first 12 years if I had never taught a struggling reader to read? I’m not saying every reading has to be Reading Recovery trained, but I am saying that a reading teacher should know how reading works.  A reading teacher should know about reading process. And a reading teacher should be able to share with classroom teachers, ELL teachers, LD teachers, special ed teachers, how to support their struggling readers.

Was my eye on struggling readers now?  

Oh yes… clearly…absolutely.  And I’ve been focused on struggling readers for the past 13 years now. I’ve been an advocate for struggling readers because I’ve made it my mission to reach as many teachers as I can and help them learn about 3 things:

• how a reading processing system works
• what that means for struggling readers
• and how to teach in ways that support struggling readers in building a reading processing system. 

Because I know it’s NOT possible for every person to get trained in Reading Recovery, I constantly think,  “How can I help? What is it from my new understandings that I could share with other teachers?” And each year since then – through all my series of workshops at schools, through my LLG (Literacy Learning Groups that I did with Title I teachers for 3 years), through my graduate classes at George Mason University, through my two books (One Child at a Time and Catching Readers Before They Fall) – each year I try to find ways to say it better.

I hope my journey has stirred up some memories for those of you reading this.  Or I hope that sharing my passion will help you focus on your own personal passion about literacy teaching. 

Workshop Round 2

Recently I found out that other teachers at my school who were not able to attend the summer reading and writing workshop course were interested after hearing everyone else talking about it, so I will be doing a second round of the training in the next couple weeks. We also invited the other teachers from another rural school who had a participant in the summer. The rest of their teachers will also be attending.

During the start of the year preparation days, teachers talked frequently about how excited they were for the workshop ideas. Those who have a partner teacher who they alternate with by week (an English teacher and a Spanish teacher) started talking about what they wanted to implement. Now they are a couple of weeks into the school year, and they are still excited.

They have been able to implement at different ranges, depending on individual classroom time frames and what the students needed most at the start of the year but all have plans for how they are going to continually implement. In addition, they have been telling me about different meetings that they have been having with each other to continually support each other, as well as to troubleshoot. I couldn't be more happy that they are continuing to collaborate.

It is so fulfilling to see their excitement and to hear how the workshop philosophy has been positively impacting their classrooms, just as I have noticed in my classroom. On a professional level, I am excited to have the opportunity to teach another round so close to the first in order to adjust and improve. When I original wrote my reflections, I had no idea that I would have another round so soon.

Celebrating Educators: Troy Hicks

This second installment of Celebrating Educators features Troy Hicks, who I first heard about through his book The Digital Writing Workshop. As I was just starting to explore with technology in education, the book instantly caught my attention. I was so glad to realize that Hicks also has a blog so that I could continue to learn from his insights. 

As a teacher educator, I am proud to work with and for my colleagues. Through workshops and conferences, classroom coaching and conversations over coffee, we have opportunities to collaborate and create, as well as to commiserate and celebrate. We write together, plan together, learn together. And, as I reflect on my journey as an educator at this, the beginning of my 15th year of teaching, I see that my work as a teacher educator has grown out of my continued desire to lead, grow, and change.

The simple story of how I came to be a teacher educator -- currently as an associate professor of English at Central Michigan University and Director of the Chippewa River Writing Project -- appears to be one of linearity: undergraduate English major working at a writing center, student teaching internship at a high school, teaching at a middle school, adjuncting at a community college, returning for graduate school in teacher education, and eventually earning a tenure-track position at a university. While this is accurate, telling the story in this manner does not describe the joys that I find in being an educator; new experiences are available to me as both a teacher and learner, so long as I'm willing to avail myself of them. And all of these experiences are a result of the relationships that I develop with dedicated colleagues. 

In particular, I would like to focus on the relationships that I've developed as a result of participating in the National Writing Project (NWP). When I was an undergraduate, I was aware of the Red Cedar Writing Project that was housed at the Michigan State University Writing Center. I knew the teachers came in each summer for an intensive workshop, and after that they were qualified to lead other professional development events and youth programs. I knew this even as I went out into my teaching, and began my masters degree, and yet I never took the opportunity to come back and participate in an Invitational Summer Institute. 

After a few years in the classroom, and participating in a variety of professional development activities, I was having a conversation with my mentor from the middle school. He knew that I wanted to move beyond my classroom walls and work towards broader goals in education. In the context of a conversation about my future, he winked and smiled while saying, "Troy, you just don't belong here anymore.” After a long mentorship, his witty insight gave me the push that I needed to call my former supervisor at the Writing Center and to reconnect with the Red Cedar Writing Project. I returned to Michigan State University that fall as a doctoral student. 

After participating in my first Summer Institute, I instantly became enamored with the NWP's twin goals of having us become better writers and better teachers of writing. I was able to focus my graduate study and full-time work around professional development opportunities for our local site, as well as the state and national network. I worked with teachers to develop presentations and workshops, shared ideas for integrating technology into their classrooms, and, eventually, in my dissertation study, collaborated with a group of teacher researchers to explore how they represented their work in digital portfolios. Through all these instances, we relied on the NWP model of “teachers teaching teachers” in which we valued and applauded our own knowledge and experiences while also seeking new resources and opportunities. 

As I finished my work at Michigan State and began the job search, one of the questions I was asked when interviewing at Central Michigan University (CMU) was whether or not I would be interested in starting a writing project. Of course, I was, as I had grown to know the teachers with whom I worked not only as colleagues, but as friends. I wanted to provide the same types of opportunities for teachers in the local contexts around CMU, and so I partnered with colleagues in the English department to establish a writing project. This was no small feat, as it required collaborations both inside and outside of the university, including local schools and intermediate school districts. We wrote the grant, were awarded a site, and then the real work began. 

After a great deal of planning, we were able to launch our first summer invitational Institute in 2009, and have, since then, continued to invite teachers to campus each summer to explore the intersections of writing and technology, all the while furthering themselves as writers and teachers of writing. Throughout the school year we meet in a variety of continuity and professional development events, many of which now are led by the teachers themselves with me acting only as an outside coach to help inform and motivate them. Also, I am able to take what I learned to work with writing project teachers and immediate we apply it in my preservice writing methods course, English 315.

At this moment, my professional career has come to a crossroads. Not because I feel it ready for a change necessarily, but because outside forces have acted to cut the funding for NWP and made me question many of the things that I took for granted because of that support I have relied upon for so long. This puts me in a precarious situation as an educator and as a leader in local, state, and national conversations about the teaching of writing. I want to continue doing the same types of good work that we've been doing for many years, and yet I find myself -- like so many other teachers have found themselves during the last year and a half -- feeling increasingly beleaguered and under pressure from a variety of sources inside and outside of school. 

It is difficult for me now to stand in front of a group of preservice teachers and, in good conscience, advise them that they are choosing the right career. I feel guilty about the pay, the status, the burdensome restrictions and supervision placed on teachers. There are times when, sadly, I can no longer try to fight against the monotony of standardized tests, the ever-increasing requirements to become certified, the demands for accountability. I want to tell them that, no, really teaching isn't all that we want to romanticize it to be. 

Yet, as my work with writing project teachers continues, my colleagues remind me that, yes, indeed, these young people are choosing the right career, the right calling. Writing has the power to change lives, and teaching writing offers us opportunities to reach our students in ways that no other content can. As a teacher educator, I know I would not be able to inspire or motivate or encourage my preservice teachers to do the kinds of work that we do inside and outside of class that helps prepare them to become better teachers of writing were not for my relationship with the writing project teachers with whom I collaborate. They remind me of the reasons we teach, and those reasons are the people who sit at the desks in our classrooms each day, not any set of standards or a meaningless test. We teach kids to become writers, and in doing so we teach them to become themselves. 

And so, in reflecting on my journey as a teacher -- and in thinking about the power of personal learning, professional networks, and the visions that I have for education, both broadly as well as in the classrooms that my own children attend -- it is only with continued collaboration and learning that I might move forward. It is possibly trite to say that I love my job, but it is not trite at all to say that I care deeply for the colleagues with whom I work, from rural to urban, K-16, near to far. This is what inspires and motivates me, and makes me want to learn so that I can share my learning with others. 

Recently, I was asked by other faculty members at my university to lead a presentation at a new faculty development workshop. Someone asked me how to become successful and how I collaborate with so many people. My simple advice was this: leadership invites collaboration. When I view myself as a leader, I can only see myself in relation to those colleagues that surround me. As I do what I can to teach them, to inspire them, and to help them become better teachers, I become a better teacher myself. 

I begin teaching next week for the 15th time. I will be proud to work with and for my colleagues each and every day of the coming year, and as they encourage me to keep learning, I will work with them for many years to come. 


*You can read last week's guest post by Penny Kittle here.