You Are In Charge of Your Own Learning!

Yes, that's right, you, me, we are in charge of our learning! 

I recently had a conversation with my 11 year old that went something like this: "Mom, aren't teachers supposed to inspire you to want to learn more?" "Yes." "Well, that's not usually what happens as you get older." "Well, no matter what happens at school or who you have, you are still in charge of your own learning.  You are responsible for what you learn, how much learn, and what you do with that learning.  You don't have to wait on a teacher to give you a push into something you like." "Oh, well, I like sign language." "Ok, so you start looking up YouTube videos, websites, articles, etc about that and you practice." About 30 min later, she could sign me lots of words.  And she's been doing this everyday since.

I also recently had a conversation with a co-worker where I remarked that I have learned more this summer than any other summer and yesterday was my first official PD class.  My oldest is taking some dual credit classes at our local college, so I've been in the library kid's section 4 days a week, at least 1-2 hours per day, with my laptop, Twitter, and some "want-to" desire.  Even if you don't have a designated time/space/etc, you can still learn something new every day!  If your school, district, department isn't offering what you need, you reach out to others, Twitter (my personal favorite), and other online places to learn, get fresh ideas, etc.  

Yesterday and today, I had the privilege of attending CFISD DLC 2015 in my district.  You can see the tweets here, since I learned how to use Storify as well.  I was introduced to Canva by Tracy Clark, which is how I made the pic above and learned how to make it applicable to my elementary students in clickable pdf's.  I learned about Maker Spaces from Randy Rodgers that got me thinking really hard about how I could infuse this idea into my campus this year.  I learned how to market my class/school from Joel Weckerly.  I got to hear our keynote Ron Clark and hear his passion for kids and teachers.  "Beware of the bundt cake and the posse of poison." -Ron Clark  And he discussed the idea of runners, joggers, walkers, and riders, which connected solidly to a book study my district has done for 3 years now: Building Teacher's Capacity for Success.  He also connected some thoughts I've had for a few years, that we need to push our kids harder and challenge them, even our fast and gifted learners.  Our country puts lots of $$$ into at-risk students, but $0 into GT education, so it's up to us to create those opportunities for our gifted kids to not quit trying so we don't raise a "soft nation" of learners.  I learned about Periscope for the first time also.

My point to all this is that YOU ARE IN CHARGE OF YOUR OWN LEARNING!  Whether you attend some formal learning like college, like I just finished in May (Yeah, Master's degree), or you attend some formal PD class/conference/convention, or you "lurk" around Twitter learning from others informally, or you listen to podcasts, YouTube videos, or any other means of online learning informally, you are ultimately in charge of where you will go, what you will learn, how far your students reach.  Will you reach farther?  Will you move out of your comfort zone this year?

Link for Pic