Stumbling.

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Jessica Hagy, Indexed

This.

Blogging is currently a chore I am having a hard time embracing. Like emptying the dishwasher and taking out the trash.

I have a few posts saved in draft form. Not sure why or how I started crafting them, but I did. Somewhere I read it’s beneficial to start a post even if you’re not certain you will ever finish it.

Write to write and keep on writing.

Lots of spring curriculum and professional development and planning work happening in my little corner of the universe right now, and it’s given me a great opportunity to work with my secondary level partner in crime who helps me think through a lot of things, and despite my inability to produce a coherent blog post, I continue to network behind the scenes, with my tweeps and PLNers and together, we think.

We think, a lot, and we also create cbdtop.club, and we trash stuff and have ideas too big for ourselves and our districts and our universes and we complain and wonder and reflect and criticize and so sometimes we question, “What are we DOING? Is any of this worth it? Is anyone utilizing the ideas I share? Why aren’t more teachers using me as a resource? How can I be better? For me? For colleagues? For kids?”

So, I tie these ramblings to kids. How often are they permitted to stumble and fumble through the confetti in their heads, to try to relate new information to their experiences and work to create new understandings?

And teachers. How often do we trust our teachers to take learning into their own hands? Can we stop micromanaging for one second to allow them to explore topics of interest and collaborate and get meaningful work done on their terms?? Sometimes I think it’s such a simple thing, this professional development, and yet we manage to mangle it up by this need to put all of our hands in it.

Sometimes I think too much, sometimes not enough. Sometimes an idea sticks, sometimes I need to move on.

And this blog is the place where I share and I reflect.

This is a place where my thinking becomes visible.

7 Replies to “Stumbling.”

  1. Lyn wrote:

    So, I tie these ramblings to kids. How often are they permitted to stumble and fumble through the confetti in their heads, to try to relate new information to their experiences and work to create new understandings?

    ———————

    Hey Pal,

    Not only is this one of the greatest lines I’ve read in a long time, it’s incredibly important. The stumbling and fumbling is where the real work of learning begins and ends. When kids aren’t given the time to do that work, we’re cheating them. Plain and simple.

    So the question becomes what is preventing stumbling and fumbling from playing a larger role in the work that we let kids do in our schools?

    And more importantly, what do we do to address those barriers to real learning experiences?

    (Now you’ve got ME thinking. #grateful).

    Bill

    1. We don’t give them enough time to do any fumbling. Especially with the adoption of lockstep programs and curricula. Even worse, we don’t allow the people who are charged with designing learning for kids that time. We don’t let teachers get messy when they learn. We micromanage and we limit their options for truly digging into learning when we do so. It is irksome and it will be difficult to truly change organizations whole scale unless we set them free.

      That became even more glaringly obvious to me when I left administration.

      Thanks for commenting, Bill!!

  2. Lyn-
    Your point is so valid–our teachers would learn so much more if we would allow them to create their own personalized plan and determine how they want to learn…and then give them the time and resources to do it! How powerful that would be. I also love how transparent your writing is. I made personal “blogging goals” for myself, but rather than writing through my writers’ block, I’m not doing much with it. You’ve inspired me to head back to the blog!

    1. Hi, Jodi,
      Thank you for your comments! I am so happy this post has inspired you to return to blogging… sometimes I am certain no one is reading, and that is okay, since I write for me. But when a reader reaches out and shares about the impact my words have made on their practice, it really means a lot to me! I saw you followed me on Tumblr which is one of the spaces I’ve neglected… so thank you for helping me revisit that!

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