Assumption of Excellence?

This morning, I read a great blog post  by Michael Smith entitled “Believing You Are Great Leaves Very Little Room for Improvement.”  In it, Smith asserts that teachers’ unwillingness to change may in fact be due to a belief in the excellence of their methods, lessons, colleagues, and the school program/curriculum  itself.  I thought this [...]

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The Wisdom of Students

Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk to some former students who are now seniors in high school.   After the ceremony honoring them (that’s another story), the young men came into the library to talk to me, and a simple conversation about school evolved into an educational policy discussion. First, they told me about their [...]

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The Importance of Conversation

Attendance at Educon 2.2 this weekend has only reinforced the idea that conversation between educators is perhaps the most important professional development tool.  Of course, it was wonderful to listen to the great minds in education present, but the most invigorating and productive sessions seemed to be those in which the group took an issue and began [...]

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The New Professional Development

Professional development used to involve taking classes, reading journal articles, and discussing issues at conferences.  Although there was a time lag between new innovations for the library and classroom, and personal knowledge and implementation of those developments, I was appreciative of the knowledge for knowledge’s sake.  But with Twitter, that time delay has disappeared.  Twitter has become [...]

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Stage 3 of PLN Adoption

After reading Jeff Utecht’s article on the stages of PLN adoption, I realize, embarrassingly enough, that I have only reached Stage 3: Know it All. For those of you not familiar with the post, it is not an egocentric state of mind, but a feeling of total inadequacy.  Once you become involved in discussions online [...]

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