Thursday, July 15th: Like a Perdue Oven Stuffer Roaster’s pop-up thermometer, I am done. Well done. Baked, fried, sauteed, stir-fried, grilled, roasted. My brain is toast. It’s like the electric grid on a 100 degree July afternoon. Overloaded. Ready to short out. Fried.
But unlikely unhealthy fried foods (although tasty), my brain is fried in a great way. This was my second day at BLC 10 and I didn’t think Day Two would measure up to the great things that I heard and learned during Day One. I was dead wrong. Again, I took the 6:02 a.m. train to arrive for the 7:30 a.m. practitioner’s session. My first choice of workshops was cancelled. I went to workshop number two and it just didn’t appeal to me. I wandered into choice number three and by 7:50 a.m., my brain was already on fire. This team from Watertown was inspiring. Incredible. Next up, keynote speaker. Yesterdays two keynotes where simply outstanding and I did not know how today’s would measure up, especially when I saw he was a Cultural Anthropologist. Alan November admitted he had never seen this keynote speaker live before. I became even more skeptical. Perhaps a cup of ice tea at Au Bon Pain would be better. However, within one minute, I was fixated on Dr. Michael Wesch and what he had to say. So fixated that I stayed to attend the follow-up session. After another mind-stretching, brain burning stretch, I decided I needed a physical stretch and went off to get that ice tea. There I ran into four Concord and CCHS colleagues who were having lunch. They invited me to join them and we had great conversations on how to share this information with our K-12 community. Next stop, off to hear Jeff Utecht, who had been highly recommended by one of my fellow colleagues. He did not disappoint. The time flew, I needed badly to go to the bathroom and hated to duck out for even two minutes. By the time 2:00 came there were flames shooting out of my ears. I headed down to the Terrace Room to hear Marco Torres (for the third time) discuss music. Wow — by the time this workshop was over, my pop-up thermometer was up. I don’t think I could absorb one more thing.
I will blog more about each workshop in more detail later. But what I can say quickly is this:
1. Dr. Wesch talked about how only 26% of his college students felt what they learned in the classroom was relevant to their lives. I have to say that BLC10 has done an outstanding job making every workshop (or 95%) that I attended over the two days totally relevant. As educators, we need to create the same type of environment for our students.
2. I learned from Jeff Utecht that blogging is both a platform and a genre. He said that “blogging is writing and reflecting on learning.” I finally found out that this writing that I have been doing on my blog is a valid genre 🙂
3. After yesterday’s iPod Touch experiment not going well, I brought my own MacBook today. However, after about 4 hours, it was down to 23% power and I had to switch back to my pen and notebook. On the other hand, my good buddy’s iPad was down to 42% power after being on from 7:30 to 4:00 p.m. So, I will be saving my pennies for one of these toys next!
The only suggestion I have for the folks at November Learning is to post one of these signs at the doors next year. What an incredible two days!!!!
SJE Coaching Report: Reflections on Teaching, Learning, and Living 