Thanksgiving Thoughts

While everyone I meet can contribute to my becoming a more effective lead learner, some individuals or groups deserve special recognition.

God - God has equipped me with compassion for others, a passion for learning and influencing learning, and a perseverance to always be improving. I am eternally grateful to God for the heart and talents with which He has blessed me.

Twitter Chats and our Professional Learning Network (PLN) - Our #ChristianEducators on Thursday nights are a dedicated group of believers, educators, administrators and caring individuals that continue to encourage us to always serve God and others with all we have. I am so grateful to God for allowing me to have a part in moderating this sacred fellowship. I am also thankful to Dr. Bill Ziegler (@DrBillZiegler) for trusting me to partner with him in leading this fine group. Our #COLchat or Culture of Learning chat on Monday nights encourages participants to initially build relationships to develop an interdependence that fosters a mutual respect and a love of learning. Our #SBLchat or Standards-Based Learning crew on Wednesday nights continues to show how genuine learning can be developed by focusing on standards or learning outcomes and creating an environment that is conducive to creating lifelong learners. I am thankful for the dedication of our co-moderators Darin Jolly (@drjolly) and Garnet Hillman (@garnet_hillman) for always focusing on what's best for our students, their parents, our teachers and administrators. Our #LeadWithGiants crew on Monday nights is always an assembled group of individuals that strive to bring leadership to the forefront, develop the leader within us and empower us to develop enduring leadership qualities in our students. Our #EdChatMA are educators primarily from Massachusetts gather on the first and third Tuesday nights to discuss how to best integrate the diverse components that can aggregate to create sustained learning and the love for it. I'm grateful to our founder and co-moderator David Hochheiser (@DavidHochheiser) for his commitment to the furtherance of our efforts and influence.

Family - Finally, at Thanksgiving, I chatted at length with a family member who provided several healthy insights into empowering learning, providing an environment where all learners are valued and encouraged to reach or exceed their potential and especially to develop the needs of individuals rather than those of the class. He reminded me that courses or classes are made up of individuals with varying backgrounds, interests, tolerance levels and abilities to focus. He defended his position by explaining how he struggled with school leaders who expected him to fit in, be compliant and just "play school" until graduation. Unfortunately, due to many challenges in and out of his control, he chose to withdraw from secondary school prior to earning his diploma. He has since earned his GED, become an entrepreneur and is maintainng a multi-million dollar company. He reminded me to not ignore the individuals in our classes that struggle to fit in as typical learners since those students often see learning differently and many are not willing to just comply with the requirements of "playing school".  I expect that integrating Universal Design for Learning (UDL) into our learning environment will significantly help in this endeavor. He thanked me for being an educator who is focused on the learner, rather than on the currculum. He instilled in me a commitment to identify those atypical students and provide them with the resources and support to enable them to develop into contributing members of society, even though they struggle to comply with the rules of the road in our schools. I promised him I'd spend more time and energy on our student outliers to help them reach their potential. Will you join me in this commitment?