Snatching Moments

Whew!  My Reading and Language Arts students have completed their state assessments.  It is a challenge every year to blend rich, meaningful learning opportunities where students create and demonstrate with activites that prepare them for multiple choice assessments.  Now that we've cleared that hurdle, we are back to sharing our writing on our blog, Jet Literacy, and recording brief podcasts on our Cinch channel.  

During those hectic days of assessment, I was challenged to snatch moments for on purpose professional learning.  And though I did manage to read a few posts and skim a tweets, I was dreadfully remiss in posting anything here!  

When our principal asked me a few weeks ago to speak with our New Teacher Academy, I knew instantly that I wanted to share about professional development.  It's not that I don't enjoy or appreciate the presenters that come to our district to conduct all-day inservices.  I do.  I have come away inspired and encouraged many times.  But the professional development that has sustained me over the long haul (27 years) falls into the "snatched moments" category.  When I first started teaching, most of those "snatched moments" happened in the workroom, hallways, or another teacher's classroom after school.  We would talk about things we had read/skimmed/copied-to-read-later or trends that were emerging.  I confess to having thin folders of articles that I read and highlighted and fat folders of articles I'd begun to read but never finished.  Often the deciding factor was the recommendation of a colleague whether to read immediately or wait until later.

As the decades, or more accurately (and much to my astonishment) a quarter of a century have passed, I've found that my "snatched moments" still often originate with recommendations of my peers.  But, my circle of peers has greatly broadened to include not only educators who teach in my building, but professionals who teach across the United States.  Some I have met in person, some I have only become acquainted with through on-line environments.  Their selfless sharing through tweets, blogs, and podcasts offers wide, rich, wonderful and free professional development.  All there for the snatching.

In my next post, I will create an evolving list of these folks whose work allows me to grow personally and professionally.