Sunday, February 10, 2013

Synergy

Last week I had a couple of conversations with teachers that made me think that we, teachers, are looking for places of energy, places where we can converge, share, and then take that energy into our world, our classrooms.

The first was with two women who I am working with in a book study group. One is a science teacher and the other a social studies teacher working with a group called the DBQ Project. Our charge is to read and study about text complexity, but our discussion was so much more than that.

We moved from text complexity to Common Core to history vs. social studies to frustrations about how teachers seem to have less and less of a voice in education and we finally landed on a discussion about how teachers in content areas HAVE to teach their students to write and read their content because it's so specific to the discipline. I left this meeting excited for the future education holds. I left feeling like I could work authentically with people around issues we care about: that students can write effectively in our respective content areas.

The other synergistic conversation actually occurred at the gym where I work out with a teacher who teaches English in middle school. We each have been given an iPad to use in the classroom and share problems, frustrations, but mostly our successes in our classrooms. Every time I talk with this person, I feel energized and I feel like we are making a difference.

You see the thing in education is that we have felt so much control taken out of the profession and given to legislatures that these little conversations are not only inspiring, but they are essential to our careers, essential to the synergistic education of our children. How else do we create excitement around learning than for those who educate to be excited about it?

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