The wiki

Just spent a couple of minutes catching up on some discussions on our staff wiki. We've had wiki's before, but now the time seems ripe; a few staff members have started to connect. It will be a place to see reports of conversations that have taken place in departments, especially about our CBL challenge, in lieu of e-mailed minutes. We are going to be a little less isolated this year, it seems to me. And our department is continuing a discussion that started at our meeting today, so hopefully we will make more progress than we could just waiting for our next face-to-face meeting.

Back at it

Oh. My. We discussed our summer reading, The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner during our staff days last week as the new school year was getting under way. Some of us remarked that we couldn't remember the last time we took staff meeting time to discuss education. It was refreshing indeed. In small groups I found out things that other teachers were doing that I had not known about, such as the cool projects in French IV. I have had a vague notion that there are pockets of innovation and experimentation going on around the school, but there has been no formal way to learn of it. Only Larry blogs, so I have known about him and my department and some other scattered stories.

That may change. Next week I will be meeting with my PCG, one of five "professional cluster groups" that will cross departments. So in time I will learn about what others are doing. Larry's taking on the groups to help us all move forward in implementing tools that will help us with our challenge: to design a challenged based project with our department to implement next year.

Exciting stuff happening at our school this year!

Staff in-service

Thought my colleague Larry did a great job planning and presenting. He presents other places, too, and preps all that in addition to his classes. Amazing.

I'm sure some folks are overwhelmed by all the information. I am to a certain extent myself, even though I was familiar with much of what was shown. Being familiar is not the same as making use of the full potential of something. And some things Larry talked about I haven't touched yet. There is so much out there.

I hope that staff members don't feel they have to immediately do everything. Pick something that looks interesting or useful, and explore.

And, if we started to utilize just one of the tools presented today to communicate more within the building, that alone would make the day a success, I think.