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My email inbox is filled with ways for me to improve myself from reading recommendations to Enneathought (how to improve my personality and spirituality) to Choice Literacy. It was this month’s Choice Literacy email that caught my eye and my idea for this week’s DigiLit topic.
This quote from Atul Gawande was the epigraph to Matt Renwick’s letter. Quoting from the Gawande’s book Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, Matt outlines 3 ways for us to be better as teachers.
- Don’t complain
- Write something
- Change
These three directives immediately resonated with me. This school year has ended, and I was having lunch with a colleague in our gifted department. She said, “We have to do better next year.”
We then began a long discussion of how we could. One way is we are going to meet together even if we don’t get paid. As the years have gone by, the education budget has gotten smaller and smaller. We were once able to meet weekly to plan for the next year and get a stipend. Does the stipend matter? Not when we are talking about doing our best for the kids. We will meet anyway.
I am reading Dynamic Teaching for Deeper Reading by Vicki Vinton. Vicki challenges our current thinking about the teaching of reading. She calls for a change to embrace reading as the complex act that it is and teach the whole child-reader. I am convinced this book will not only improve my teaching, it will improve me.
The only way to make sense of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. –Alan Watts
Summer break is a time to rejuvenate and renew what we believe about our own lives as well as our selves as teachers. This year was my thirtieth year in education. Yet, I’m not best yet. I continue to talk, write, and change to meet my own needs and those of my students. Won’t you join me in doing the same?
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Margaret, thank you for continuing the conversation on the topic of becoming better as professionals. Agreeing to meet with colleagues for professional learning beyond school requirements is an admirable choice. You already do this, I feel, with your weekly reflections and your active online presence. It’s too back your district does not honor these commitments in some way.
Enjoy the summer!
-Matt
I am so blessed to be in a circle of online colleagues who believe in the word “better.” These relationships fuel me to be diligent and be willing to try new things. Thank you for being a part of that. (I think I need to get Vicki’s book!)
I just wrote a similar comment on your post. You do need Vicki’s book. She will make you think.
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