I love the students in my class.  I also understand that I have a relatively narrow perspective of the education system.  My k-12 education came from a suburban district with high achievement, I went to college within 10 miles of my hometown, and I now teach in a district within 10 miles of my hometown and college.  I feel comfortable with the knowledge I possess and I believe that I’m working hard at becoming an excellent educator – however I also realize that with my narrow experience I must be missing something.  My solution?  Reading, twitter, and anything else I can get my hands on to increase my student’s growth and love for school.  Everything that fits within my schema gets incorporated into my daily teaching.

I had a particularly powerful experience at MACUL when Kevin Honeycutt was talking about creating students who are producers rather than consumers.  To me this means that as a teacher I need to be a producer and role model for my students.  As a musician I immediately went back to composing my own songs (like students do in my classes) and sharing them with my students.  I was really proud until I realized this wasn’t really me creating in my field.  My field is education.  I’m a consumer.  My dilemma comes from my insatiable appetite for new information – transformative information.  It seems like almost every book I read, video I watch, or blog I follow I pick things up that I think “how did I live without this” or more importantly “how was I teaching without this”.  How can I produce when I know next month I’m going to read something that is going to make my next iteration of thinking so much better than my current thinking?

I’m creating this blog to begin my journey into becoming a producer.  I’ve been a consumer and I want to begin to add to the conversation in a meaningful way.  I need to in order to become the role model my students deserve.