Back from the dead

Melissa — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 23:24:01 +0000

I checked out for 11 months. I thought I could blog and start teaching at a new school, but I couldn’t manage it. I needed to save my creative energy to use in the classroom, and there never seemed to be enough time for reflection. I only wanted to read, learn, experiment, plan and do it all over again.

School’s been out now for two days, and after a year of what seriously feels like inventing the wheel, I feel a great need to reflect. It has been an amazingly creative time for me, but I have to admit, it’s been a big adjustment to a new school culture, with the co-workers, the kids, the administration, the policies and the routines that come with change. I’m exhausted, a little irritable during the transition to summer, but also deeply satisfied.

I’m going to set a goal of blogging every day for a month, well, until July 12 when I leave for an ASNE Journalism Fellowship in Columbia, MO. The two weeks there are supposedly intense and will likely cut into my blogging time.

Topics to come:

Ning experiences (did I like it more than my kids?)
Wiki (ditto)
The online survey I had my students take at the end of the year (not sure I wanted to know all that)
Sophomores (teaching them, understanding them?)
World Lit (assignments that worked, those that didn’t, brainstorming for next year)
Journalism (the class I’ll start in the fall, the book my kids published this year)
Teaching (why unions need to be weakened but not destroyed in order to save our profession)
International collaboration efforts (what I want to do next year)

Photo credit: “Blue Day Moon” by Jon Matthews

Melissa Wantz: Notes from West Egg » unions. collaboration

Back from the dead