Monday, November 19, 2012

So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part IV

   It seems to me that we see more and more of these students all the time. Students who are hurting, who need help, who have challenges of all sorts. Or maybe we are just more aware of it than we used to be.

   In my small school we have limited resources for our special needs department. It's always a challenge to allocate time and resources. We see all of those students who so desperately need help and try to figure out how best to spend the resources God has given us. Inevitably it's the gifted students who don't get the resources. We say, "The don't need it, the classroom teacher can enrich their program." And those of us in the classroom strive as best we can to deliver, sometimes we even do it well.

   This is where I had my brainstorm. If we could offer a service to families of gifted children they would probably jump at it. What's more our experience with the Arrowsmith program told us that if we offered a worthwhile program parents would be willing to pay extra.

   So I took everything I had been learning about online education and packaged it up in a program for students who needed an extra challenge. I centred it around authentic projects that were as diverse as I could dream up.

   Then I started sharing my idea.

   You know what surprised me? They didn't think I was crazy! What's more they signed on and helped make it real! You can visit this site to read all about the things we did.

   We ran the program for a year and it worked remarkably well! Not perfectly, and we learned an awful lot, but in the end it was a great experience for the students and for me. Feel free to check out these parent testimonials to hear their point of view.

   So why aren't you doing this now?

Well, that's a story for another day.

So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part I
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part II
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part III
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part IV

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Silos

My dad tells stories of how he built silos to pay his way through university.

Sometimes I build silos too, but I'm not supposed to.

My principal often phrases it as "being Kings and Queens in our own castle".

It's too easy for us as teachers to go into our own classrooms, close the door and teach all by ourselves. To build silos, to build our own castle and not let anyone else in.

And that's why I want to say thank you to Martha and Jennica, two amazing teachers that I got to spend a day with earlier this week.

These two brave souls were interested enough in the work I had done last year in the online pilot I led to respond when I went looking for other teachers to collaborate with.

They came to my workshop on GoogleApps this past summer to learn the tools we would use, and then the three of us met before school started to dream how we might work together as 3 teachers from 3 different classrooms from 3 different schools. We each headed back to our own classrooms to get the ball rolling and have been in frequent contact to solve all sorts of issues as we moved forward. This past Monday we met again to plan the second phase of our collaborative project between our 3 classes.

What an amazing experience that day was! I got to spend a whole day with two other passionate, inspired teachers bouncing ideas off of each other, learning, growing, and stretching. Ideas that if I had dreamed them up on my own would never have been half as good. I came home from that day exhausted, but exhilarated and inspired. I can hardly wait to find our which of our ideas work and which ones don't! What's more I learned so much from these two teachers that will flow into the rest of my classroom and I look forward to continuing to communicate with them throughout the rest of the year.

Dad, you may have told me stories of how you built silos, but I hope to tell my children stories about how I broke them.

Monday, October 29, 2012

Why I teach!

Today I was in the middle of a history class in which we were studying how the early Christians lived and what made them so different from the Roman culture they lived in. One of my students became intrigued and asked a slightly off-topic question. What followed was one of those teachable moments that you dream of as a teacher.

"What is heaven like?"
"How can there be a good God when bad things happen?"
"How are we saved?"
"How do we know Christianity is true?"
"How can we trust the Bible?"
"Why are people afraid of death?" 

This is why I teach in a Christian school.

I get to answer the most important questions of all, and it's my job! I enjoyed that hour and a half with my students more than anything else. God blessed me with the chance to influence these young people and perhaps help them grow in faith. I love my job!!!!!!!!

I left them with one of my favourite stories. You can read a version of it here.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Authentic Projects

One of the challenges of encouraging students to write is that often their work is only going to be read by their teacher and perhaps their parents. Occasionally it might get read by grandparents or others. Sometimes there's some kind of essay, poetry, or short story competition they can enter. But most of the time their work does not have a real, or authentic, audience.

I have been looking for ways to make the work my students do as authentic as possible.

Like many years before I've given them a writing assignment in which they have to write their autobiography. You can see the outline of that assignment here.

So what's different about this assignment? It's like many other autobiographies before it, isn't it?

This time they have a purpose. I've been blessed by two brave teachers who've joined me in trying to do something a little different. We're taking our three classrooms and having them join together to complete a series of projects collaboratively over the internet. We're going to have the students work in teams made up of students from multiple schools. Then they are going to work at a number of different tasks where they have to work with these partners at a distance using internet communication tools.

The first step is creating their partners and that's where the autobiographies come in. The students are writing their autobiographies with the intent that the classes from the other schools are going to read them. Then the students are going to submit their top choices for partners to the teachers who will then go and craft the teams. Thus the autobiographies have a purpose. The students are introducing who they are as people, as well as demonstrating their writing talents.

Take a look at the autobiographies they've written. You can find them on their blogs here.

Here's a sample of one of the student's work,

"Life is great!  I enjoy hanging and laughing with my best friends!  Ok, lets just say it this way: Life is like a jaw breaker it is good all the way through but still has a few layers bursting with flavor.  Some are sweet, and some sour, but they all have just the right amount of sugar and are full of bright rainbow of colors."

I have no idea how these projects are going to turn out, but it's certainly fun trying!

Friday, October 19, 2012

Grades

I don't like grades.

Don't get me wrong, it's not because of laziness or because I don't like looking at student work. In fact, I find the process of assessing student work, conferencing with a student about their work, providing feedback, and so much more to be incredibly valuable. It's in that process that so much learning can happen.

No, my problems with grading lie elsewhere.

  1. It feeds into the factory model of schooling. During conferences with a parent they asked where their child was in relation to the rest of the class. This bothered me. It's the wrong question. The questions ought to be, "Is my child growing and learning more than yesterday? Are they living up to their potential?"
  2. To quote one of my students this past week, "We don't come to school to be judged." There's a harshness to grading that I find offensive. Too many of our students have their self-worth wrapped up in grades, especially those who excel in school.
  3. It's too final. Learning should be a constant process. The minute you put a grade on it, students stop.
That's all I've got for now, if I think of more I'll come back here and edit some more.

In the meantime, I've got some current events assignments that need to be graded.........

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

More about Failure

This week I asked students to choose from the following two topics and write a blog.


  1. Write about a success or achievement that happened here at school.  Why do you remember it?  How did it change your thinking or feelings?
  2. Write about a time that something you did at school was a flop or you failed.  How did that make you feel?  How did it change your way of thinking and doing things?


Here's the interesting question: How many of them will dare to choose the 2nd option? How many of them are brave enough to embrace their failure, or even talk about it?

To often we've structured schools to be places where failure is anathema. I've had many conversations with parents who cannot abide the possibility of their children failing.

And yet, I think that failure is healthy and that we should provide more opportunities for students in our schools to take risks and learn how to deal with, live with, and grow from failure.

Here's a list of my student's blogs. Feel free to check them out. Let's see which ones dare talk about failure. Then let's find out how to encourage the rest of them to be brave enough to look at their failures.

Monday, October 1, 2012

It's not due if I don't Blog.

I'm aiming to have my students blogging once a week. As part of that process I've promised my students that their blogs aren't due unless I have complete my blog.

So, I'm going to complete the same assignment today that I'm giving them for this week.

Our school is a 7 Habits school. That would be the "7 Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey. We are inspired by A. B. Combs, a school that applied the 7 Habits to how their school runs. Although, as a Christian school, we take a slightly different angle on some of these ideas.

One of the 7 Habits is "Begin with the End in Mind". In my classroom I have students write their Personal Mission Statements. So I've assigned them the task of blogging their mission statement and explaining it.

So here's mine:


My Personal Mission Statement

Primary:
Serve God.
Love my Wife and children.
Be there for my friends and family.

Secondary:
Be honest.
Be worthy of trust.
Be prepared.
Be flexible.
Work hard.
Admit mistakes.
Fix mistakes.
Listen.
Learn.
Be Patient.

Explanation:

The primary elements of my mission statement: I want to be the best Father, Husband, Son, Brother, and Friend I can be. None of that happens unless God is at the centre. With God at the centre all those other roles that I desire to be fall into place.

The secondary elements of my mission statement: I have not been called to mediocrity. I have been called to excellence. But excellence demands excellent character. Even though these are lofty goals that I fall far short of, it's what I'm aiming for. I want to be the kind of person that someone else can count on, and so each day I strive to live up to these character qualities.

Ok, now let's hear yours.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Failure

One of the things that bothers me as a teacher is when students are afraid to try. Often they are afraid of failure.

How do we teach our children not to be afraid of failing? How do we show them it is often through failure that we grow? That taking risks and missing the mark is a great idea?

We have to demonstrate it.

And this week I did.

Two of my project ideas this past week failed, one almost totally and the other only a little bit.

First, I had wanted to have my students learn to use Google search better. One of the best ways to learn anything is to teach it to others. So I planned on having my students teach themselves how to do better Google searches and then go and teach other classes. I still think the the core of this idea is worth considering, but the way I went about it didn't work. The material I gave them was too tough, and the instructions not clear enough. What's more I was startled to find that at least a third of them didn't care about getting better at Google searches. To their mind Google was good enough without really understanding it.

So I've had to shelve the project for a time. I still want to try it, since I think it would be really valuable on many levels, but I need to re-think my original approach.

The second project that failed was an attempt to allow for differentiated instruction in spelling lessons. I had each student creating their own spelling lists, then they were going to create assignments for each other to complete based on those spelling lists. Once again, the core idea is really good, but the implementation went a little awry. The idea of having the students designing the assignments failed. You see, we had some students sick, some technical difficulty with some of the software we tried to use, and we had some students who just couldn't get their work in on time, which meant other students didn't have assignments to do. In the end I made up some spelling assignments for everyone instead, and I think I will continue to do so for the next while. We may come back to creating assignments for each other later.

All in all, an awesome series of lessons learned by me and my students!

I hope that my failures will make my classroom a safer place for my students to take risks and try bold things.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Guinea Pigs

It's already the second week of school!

I am enjoying working with my students so much.



I warned my students that they would be Guinea Pigs this year. I am trying all sorts of new things.

One of the things we've started is a blog for each student.

Here's a sample of their reactions to the first weeks of school.

http://hhcsgr7bmadelinez.blogspot.ca/

http://hhcsgr7bjaded.blogspot.ca/

http://hhcsgr7bjustins.blogspot.ca/

http://hhcsgr7bryand.blogspot.ca/

http://hhcsgr7bhaleyd.blogspot.ca/

Check out their work so far, encourage them by leaving a comment!

Thursday, August 30, 2012

A Clean Slate



Last year I had the privilege of teaching inn a radically different manner. One of the consequences is I did not have a room of my own in the school. I didn't even have a desk or a chair to call my own. So I had to take ten years of accumulated teaching "stuff" and find a way to store it. Our school is so full I couldn't just stick it all in boxes and hide it somewhere. I had to actually go through every single thing and keep only the vital items. This led me to throwing away hundreds and hundreds of items.

What a blessing this was.

Now that I am returning to a "regular" classroom I have to start over. Which I love! Most of the time. While, it is a ton of work to re-create a classroom from scratch I find myself in the position of re-thinking everything I've done for ten years. My experiences over the last year have a place to live. Many of the fundamental assumptions about how a classroom should be run are being questioned. Some of what I've done in the past was good and will be held onto, but other things will be let go.

So even though I am looking at a very long weekend putting my classroom together for that first day of school, I am thankful for the opportunity to work from a clean slate.

Monday, August 6, 2012

My New Teaching Assignment

At long last I finally have my teaching assignment for the next school year.

It turns out there was a bit of a mix-up and I wasn't sent my schedule. So it's arrived a little late.

I was bold at the end of this past year and I asked for a very challenging assignment. but one that I was very passionate about doing.

I asked to teach English along with most of the heavy content areas in a single classroom after spending 5 years way from this kind of class.

I got what I asked for!

I spent the last year doing all kinds of fascinating projects online with a group of students from 6 different schools. Now I want to take all of the things I've learned and apply them to a "regular" classroom.

I can hardly wait to meet my students and start exploring with them the endless possibilities for learning that lie at our fingertips!


Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Fears for my new classroom

My fears for next school year were reinforced recently.

I had been exploring the space in my room and putting the desks in different configurations in order to get a feel for the space. I was out for a while and when I came back one of my fellow staff members mentioned that a parent of one of my future students dropped by and had a negative reaction to the current layout of the room.

I want to explore experiment and try new things. That also means there will be failures. How will the parents of the students in my classroom handle it?


Some of the things I'm going to try will turn out to be bad ideas. Some of them will be good ideas that I implement badly, or that just don't work with this group of students.


I want to create a classroom in which experimentation and failure is acceptable. Where it is perfectly fine to stretch yourself, to try hard and miss the mark and then get back up again. Where students will be willing to push themselves to the limit.



The best way to do that is to lead the way and show my students that taking risks and failing is perfectly acceptable.

The question is, can the parents handle it?

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Now What?

I'm not waiting any more.

We did not get enough participants in our online program to run it for a second year, despite how successful it was in the first year. There are plenty of reasons for that, which I might go into in later blog posts.

What's next?

I'll be heading back into a more traditional classroom after spending a year teaching online. In may ways it's like a sabbatical. I've been invigorated and refreshed by many new ideas that I want to bring to my classroom.

One particularly exciting part is that I had to pack up all my old stuff a year ago and clear out my room. Now I'm moving into a new room for the first time in 10 years. With my experiences of the last year I will walk into my room and re-think all the things that I did for so many years.

For example:

  1. Why do I need a teacher desk? 
  2. Why do I need a filing cabinet?
  3. Why do I always have the students facing the same way, every day, all year?
  4. Why put the homework on the board when I can put it in a shared calendar online? (Shared with parents too!)
  5. Why do anything on paper? (Actually there are good reasons to do things on paper at certain times, but it is important to ask if it's the appropriate medium.)
  6. Why am I the one deciding what all the projects and assignments should be? How much can the students do?
  7. And so many more.....
But I'm afraid.............

Monday, June 11, 2012

So What Are You Going to Do About It? Part III

So I started listening to the  The Christian Educator Podcast.

There I discovered a school that was actively using online tools to teach. It introduced me to so many other resources and ideas that stretched my thinking. (See this blog post for some of them)

After a year and a half of listening, reading, and thinking I started looking for other Christian educators in my neck of the woods (Ontario, Canada) who were doing and thinking the same kinds of things about online tools and their impact on education. I couldn't find anyone.

Finally, late in August of 2010 I read Disrupting Class.

After that I decided that waiting for someone else to act wouldn't do. I decided that I would have to do something. But I didn't know what. What's more, I was just a classroom teacher, how would I get anyone to try anything?

It was in October 2010 that I finally had a brainstorm.


So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part I
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part II
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part III
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part IV


Monday, June 4, 2012

Celebrating My Students work

One of the great privileges of this past year has been working with some amazing students. They have been able to create some fantastic work.

Too often we don't realize how much our youth are capable of.

Here are a few samples of the work my students have done this past year:


You could also go to iTunes and search in the podcast category for "The Young Prophets", where you can hear episode 26 from one of my students this year. (The other 25 episodes are from previous years.)

I want to see more students creating work like this.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

Waiting....

I'm waiting.

Waiting for Thursday of this week.

I'm waiting because that's the deadline for the applications for the online project I've been running. Any parent who wishes their student to be a part of this program for next school year has to have their application in by then. (If you want to know more check out www.ceiada.org and read this blog as I share more of the journey that led me to where I am today.)

We need the applications then so we can decide what roles I will or will not take in our school this next year.

We have a minimum number of students we need in order to run it, and it's not guaranteed that we'll reach it.

I'm torn.

On one hand, I would love to do a second year of the program. It worked remarkably well this past year, despite a number of challenges, and I'd love to do year two because I can make it so much better now. I have so much more experience and so many ideas for how to make everything better.

On the other hand, I would love to go back to a "traditional" classroom because I have so many ideas and experiences that would make a classroom that I teach anything but "traditional". Which was one of the key purposes of this pilot program we're running in the first place.

So, when the final application arrives and we sit down next week to determine exactly what job I will be doing next year, I want both. I'd love to spend the next year re-fining an online program, or spend the year taking a "traditional" classroom and bending it as far outside of the box as I can. But there's only one of me and I can't. In the meantime.....

I'm waiting.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

So What Are You Going to Do About It? Part II

So, what does a Christian iPod look like?

I started searching for podcasts that would provide positive influences in my life instead of leading me into sin.

I found some good ones on the Focus on the Family website about parenting and marriage. I found some good devotionals online. I found some about teaching to help improve my craft in the classroom.

I began to spend my time listening to valuable resources instead of only fluff. I put the headphones away when I walked in the house. I found a more balanced approach to using the device in my life. This tool began to help me become a better person instead of a more greedy and selfish one.

Then I found The Christian Educator Podcast.

That changed everything.


So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part I
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part II
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part III
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part IV


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Take aways from Vancouver Symposium

I was privileged enough to be invited to go to the The Vancouver Symposium on Christian Education for the 21st Century a short while ago. I was even asked to share my experiences to a small group. It was a real honour.

I'm still processing all I heard and experienced there. I just finished reading some of the other delegates blogs about their take a ways, and I though I would have to share mine. Thanks Paul Kelly, Barend Blom, and Pippa Davies.

1) I was so amazed to spend time with Christians from all over the world. France, Malaysia, Australia, South Africa, South America, and so many more. It was such a blessing to see so many educators with a passion for Christian Education.

2) It was such a blessing to learn about so many other ways of doing Christian education. The group of schools I belong to is relatively homogeneous, and this group of educators was anything but!

3) I was especially inspired by the work of our colleagues from Northern Beaches Christian School in Australia. Their work is inspiring me to consider doing some very different things here.

It was an incredible experience, and I hope that I have the opportunity to go again next year, God willing.

Monday, May 7, 2012

So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part I

It all begins when my Mom won an iPod.



That's right, my Mom won an iPod. She didn't know what to do with it, so she gave it to me. Being a geek I, of course, said, "Yes!"

Not having a lot of money, I didn't buy any music or any apps. I didn't even know what an app was! Instead, I found podcasts. I happen to be an avid gamer, so I found podcasts about games. Lots of podcasts and lots of games. Podcasts from Korea, from Texas, from all over. My world began to expand. I learned about lots of games that I really wanted to play.

But something else happened too. I started to get covetous. I wanted all those games. I became greedy, I began thinking more and more about all those games I didn't have. What's more, I started listening to the iPod around the house, since there were so many podcasts to keep up on. I started ignoring my wife and children.

In short, the iPod led me into sin.

Now, I happen to believe that this world is God's world. That things like iPods can be used for sin as well as for good.

So I started asking, "What does a Christian iPod look like?"


So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part I
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part II
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part III
So What Are You Going to Do About it? Part IV

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

What did you say?

I can hear the question some of you are asking after my last blog post.

"What? You don't want your child to go to school? Aren't you a teacher at a Christian School?"

Indeed I am. Not just any school either. In fact, I work at a good school, a very good school, an exceptional school even.

We have a vibrant and healthy supportive community, many engaged and committed parents, a visionary school board, a dedicated and innovative leadership team, incredible staff members, and wonderful students. We have a great building that's full, healthy finances, plenty of resources, and so much more.

My fellow teachers are skilled practitioners of their craft, with plenty of creativity to go along with it. I'm watching our grade 7 English teacher lead her students through a wonderful exercise where they interact with seniors and write their life stories. I am amazed at our grade 8 teacher's depth of experience and easy camaraderie with his students, our VP teaches wonderful hands on lessons in his classes and supports us in so many ways through his gifts with tools, and that's only the first two classrooms at my end of the building. I could go on and on naming each staff member and the amazing gifts they bring to our staff.

My son is in grade 1 with a highly skilled teacher from whom he is learning so much. My middle daughter will be entering Kindergarten next year and there are two fantastic teachers she might get. I'm actually torn because I'd love for her to have both of them, but she'll only get one.

So what's my problem?

I think Sir Ken Robinson explains it best:

When I think of my children entering this factory model of education that's why I don't want them to go to school. Except that the school is the best choice we have at the moment. (We entertained homeschooling, but it just won't work for us.)

Our school is a very good school. In fact, I wouldn't want my children to go to any other school. But my school is going to struggle to provide the kind of challenges and supports to help my children to grow to their fullest potential. Let alone the many other children who enter our classrooms every day who have an even wider array of gifts, talents, and challenges. Each child is so unique and our "one size fits all" model of schooling doesn't leave much room for their development.

How could we get away from the factory model of education? What would that look like? How could we create new kinds of schools and learning experiences that would allow for each child to grow and develop to their greatest potential?

These are the questions that circle my mind every day. These are the things I think about as I work in my classroom with my students.

I don't have answers, just lots of questions.

Monday, April 30, 2012

My Second Prayer

How easy is it for us as parents to burden our children with our broken dreams and missed opportunities? To try to relive our lives vicariously through our kids? To burden our children with the unyielding weight of our expectations?

I'm often afraid that my second prayer may do that to my three.



I pray that they'll be smart. 

I want them to love to learn and stretch and grow. To love books and thinking. To develop their talents to their full potential. I want to push them and challenge them. I want them to be out of the box thinkers, bold innovators, brave leaders, and so much more.

And yet, what if that's not what they are called to do? What if their gifts and talents are different than mine. As they probably will be. I know my Dad, who I respect enourmously, hoped I'd be a chess player, and I can't stand chess. So, I know that they will probably turn out very much unlike me.

So let me revise my second prayer.

I pray that they will take their God given talents and gifts and stretch them to their fullest potential, no matter what those gifts might be. I pray that they'll grow into unique and radically different people who are incredibly competent, serving God in many varied ways.

And that's why I don't want to send them to school.

Wednesday, April 25, 2012

My First Prayer

To paraphrase a father far greater than I, "These are my children in whom I am well pleased!"


Every night when I put my children to bed I pray the same prayer. The one thing that I desire for my children above all else. That they would know and love the Lord. While I give them a backrub, sing "Father, I adore you", listen to them talk about their school day, or listen to them pray "Now I lay me down to sleep..." I lift them up in prayer to the Lord of All and ask that the Holy Spirit would reach these three apples of my eye.

"Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it." Proverbs 22:6

My wife and I do all I can to model, emulate, and teach our children to know and love the Lord. But we also know that we are broken, sinful parents and our best efforts will never be enough. What's more we also know that each child will make their own choice about their faith and there are no guarantees that they will choose faith.

With that in mind we choose to take advantage of every opportunity that exists to encourage our children to grow in faith.

This is one of the reasons we are such ardent supporters of Christian Education and Christian schools. If there is an opportunity that will allow us as parents to do a better job of raising our children to know and love Christ we'll take it no matter what the cost.

Students from my online class explain one of the key reasons we believe so strongly in Christian education in this video:



I know that there are many Christians who did just fine in public education. I also strongly encourage those Christians who are called work as teachers in the public system as they are needed there. I've heard the arguments about having our children serve as witnesses in the public system. I've heard people complain about the fact that our Christian schools are full of sinful, broken human beings just like the rest of the world.

But none of that matters if Christian schools will make a difference in my children's faith life.

I've always believed that Christian schools (and homeschooling for that matter) make a huge difference in the lives of our children. There's even a recent research project by Cardus gives us reason to believe that it's true. I know that it made a difference in my life.

As a father I must do all I can to raise my children up in the way that they should go.

That is my first prayer.

Sunday, April 22, 2012

Why start another blog?


Amongst the many thousands of voices on the internet what makes me think that I have anything to offer? Aren’t there are others wiser, more experienced, and more articulate than myself? What makes me think that anyone would listen to my voice?

Truthfully, I’m not certain I have a good answer to those questions. But here’s why I’m doing it:

1) Earlier this year I heard Andy Crouch speak and was inspired. (I’m still singing “I hear music in the air.”) I just finished reading his book “Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling.” He uses lots of “Cs” in this book, but in the end the key idea that I heard was that we as Christians need to create culture. I’ve been challenged to think about how I can create culture. While I love to sing, I’m not a musician. I love to read, but I’m not about to write a book. What am I good at? I like to think. A lot. And so I’m creating this blog as a place to share my thinking. It is my humble attempt to add something to the culture of our world. Even if no one reads it.

2) In the last few years I have been on an educational journey. Learning at the intersection of education and technology. I’ve been scouring the internet for other Christian educators who are doing the same. I’ve found quite a few who have inspired my thinking.
But not one of these is in the educational jurisdiction that I’m in. I’ve been searching throughout my community for others who are sharing their thinking in this medium and I’ve come to the conclusion that there aren’t any. Yet. Perhaps I can encourage others to do the same by starting.

3) I want to engage my students in authentic tasks where they put their work on the public stage. But how can I ask that of them if I don’t do the same?

4) And finally, but far from the least. I hear God calling. More on this in a later post.