Follow Up... Continue On

Following up...

This past Wednesday was our "reunion" gathering... at Eastman.  Well, sort of "at Eastman."  Beverly was in Washington, Scott was in Canada, Rachael was in Ohio, Annie, Glen, Eli and Carl were in Virginia.  Sadly, Karen's effort to join us was thwarted by techno-gaffs.  (Curse you, 5.0!)

Around the table in Rochester were myself, Lisa, Emmy, Medea, Jennifer, Donna, Anne Marie, and Janet.  Mary Helen and Karen Medley were able to join us for lunch.  The Skyping process wasn't flawless, but all-in-all the meeting seemed to go well.  It was certainly great to hear and see so many of our group members.  And the discussion was helpful to me.  Other people shared things that both challenged and affirmed me.  I won't go so far as to say that I want to get back into my classroom tomorrow morning, but I started to feel that hopeful sense of curiosity about the upcoming school year that seems to return each summer.

And I have a renewed sense that there is considerable interest in working together throughout this coming year.  Although we all seem to understand that there is a wide range of "realities" for our group members, many are willing to continue to explore how we can collaborate with each other.  I'm grateful to all of you for this, because this connection is increasing the impact of the levels courses on my teaching.

My sincere thanks to Donna and her staff, Dominick from IT, Ann Marie Stanley, and especially to Janet.  These folks have provided support that not only made this meeting possible and fruitful, but they have all offered support for our future, whatever that is.  With their added support it seems like we have much of what we need to continue our beneficial association, even if we don't completely understand what that will look like, much less what it will bring.

I considered trying to summarize the "sharing" portion of the meeting, but I think I have a better idea.  Could we do it together?  If you have time, please consider adding a post to the blog that answers one or both of the questions that we used during the meeting.  This will be a great way to include the folks who were not able to attend the meeting.

What are some of the ideas you tried out this past year that grew out of your experience in Level II?

What challenged you or puzzled you as you implemented ideas and processes from the course?  Many folks extended this into the coming year...  challenges that lie ahead.

... and continuing on.

So the blog will remain.

I have changed some settings in an effort to improve the flow of information.  Hopefully these adjustments will also make it easier for everyone to find the blog.  Where the blog had been quite private before, it is now completely public.  Well, sort of.  I have changed the settings to public (anyone can dial it up and view it), so that we can each "follow" the activity on the blog.  By signing up for email notification, each of us will be better able to track what's happening here (there will be a link to the blog in every email).  In a sense, you will no longer have to "go to the blog," in order to find out what it happening.  Now it will come to you.

I don't think that this puts our content at risk of being viewed by lurking unknowns.  While I had to change the blog settings to "public" in order to activate the follow feature, I believe I was able to affect the settings in such away that the blog will not be found by search engines.  In a sense, we're invisible to those who don't have our address.  I don't want to go so far as to promise that we won't ever be found by anyone outside of our group, but I do find that possibility highly unlikely.  And my sense is that most of what we're about here will be of little or no interest to 99.999% of people on the internet.  I think we're safe.

In light of the blog's renewal for the 2012-2013 season, we discussed some options for its use.  Glen suggested that some of us might form a schedule for authoring duties.  Interested "authors" will volunteer to fill a spot on the schedule.  The hope is that people will feel free to write about successes, challenges, questions, readings, or other issues that are relevant for them.  It can be fairly open.  Hopefully each of these posts will open the floodgates of responses and dialog.  Okay, maybe that's not entirely realistic, but I can dream.

Of course, anyone is welcome to post a new blog entry at any time for any reason.  The schedule would simply be a device to keep content coming with some level of regularity.

Rachael suggested that we make further attempts to use Skype.  We briefly discussed an approach similar to the blog schedule mentioned above.  I will try to establish a list of people willing to lead/facilitate a Skype meeting.  I will also need to survey interested participants to figure out when will be good times for these meetings.  I'm sure that most of us are home at 11:00 pm on Mondays, for example.  That said, the scheduling might be a challenge, but let's try it.  Those who agree to facilitate will have free reign to establish the agenda for their meeting's topics and tasks.  My hunch is that this can be fairly simple.  Getting face time to talk is the goal.  The other "planning" should be just sufficient to get the ball rolling and give the meeting shape.

Ann Marie Stanley has offered her support in many ways.  One such idea was assigning interested people phone buddies.  Emmy likes this idea, and thinks that it might be the best fit for her.  I suspect others may feel the same way.  I want to touch base with Ann Marie about a number of things and will be sure to explore this idea further when I speak to her.  Stay tuned.

By the way, if you have not had a chance to read the articles by Ann Marie and Janet, I recommend you take a look at both of them.  I found them to be very helpful as I have tried to wrap my mind around the "whys" and "hows" of doing this work together.

The book, "The ABC's of Education; A Primer for Schools to Come," by Doug Goodkin, was mentioned briefly.  Glen recently mentioned that he was reading the book and suggested that some of us might want to dialog about it.  I'm aware that several of us have purchased it or plan to.  Although we did not make a formal plan for reading and discussing the book, it occurred to us during the meeting that we can consider this part of the "menu" of materials to work with during our journey.  People can blog about it or pick a chapter for discussion at a Skype session.  I agree that this somewhat "organic" way of using the book might be the best.  If anyone else would like to offer another suggestion, I welcome that.

The other idea that was discussed at our gathering was creating video tours of our classrooms.  I'll be writing about this specific idea in the coming weeks.  If you're like me, your room is in no condition to be video taped right now, and you're not spending time there anyway.  I'll try to give shape to this task and include information about how to post the videos.  Stay tuned, please.


Look for a monkey in your mailbox.

In the coming days, I plan to send out a short survey using "Survey Monkey."  Of course, no one is required to respond, but I'm hoping that I can use that device to gather some information about which of the preceding options folks hope to be part of.  The more information that I can get back, the more likely it will be that we can start the school year with a viable structure for our collaboration.

As part of that survey, I'll be asking about the St. Louis conference.  Janet is strongly interested in having representatives from our group at a session which will deal with teacher inquiry and learning communities.

Sorry for the length of this entry, but "wordy" is who I am, other people must know it, so I should just embrace it.  Right?