Perfect, is it worth the wait?

I can honestly say from personal experience that opposites do attract. My husband came home from work yesterday with the results of a personality test. I have to say that it fit him perfectly.  As he read the paragraph descriptions for his top five descriptors, we laughed at how it described him like no other "personality test" ever has.   It said that he was structured, rigid, has to have a checklist formulated before he gets out of bed and  check things off everyday before he goes to bed, it doesn't have to be perfect-it just has to be done, frames interactions as a story teller, and seen as an expert at what he does, does a good job of blowing holes in other peoples ideas and feels a sense of pride when he "shows" others how their thinking is wrong. His bottom five had to do with: shows empathy, visionary, comfortable with instability or new situations, patience and able to see a solution to a problem not seen before.

Funny thing is, I am those things that he is not.  I feel others pain, which leads to letting it affect my feeling of worth (even though I know I have insightful ideas), want things to be perfect and have a hard time getting things completed because I want them to be perfect (not just right). I can see where I want to go but have a hard time getting there because there are so many choices of paths to take. 

Being a math and biology teacher has shown me that math teachers are much more like my husband and bio teachers are more like me. Is that because math has a structure already created for us and we just have to pass it on to students?  Old way to teach math was procedural.  Bio teachers are by nature inquisitive about the world around them and want to pass on that wonderment to their students. Life isn't always set out before us, sometimes you have to inquire why something happens like it does and then go about proving what you thought was true, contrary to others beliefs. It takes a brave soul to go against the norm. Look at the great scientists of the past. They were thrown in prison, ostracized, and ridiculed for their beliefs.

I wonder, after all these years of trying to be perfect, I should just let go and just get it done. There are far less obstacles to overcome, if you just get it done and don't worry about being perfect. People readily accept you. If you try to do something different and want it to be perfect, it may never get done perfectly. I still want to change the world, but maybe small imperfect steps would be a better option than large perfect ones. 

I am one of those people that need to see the whole picture. How one thing fits in with another and work from there. I'm not a GPS follower. Some people get out their GPS and just follow the directions. I need to actually see my position on the map to see where I'm headed, in case a detour pops up, and I can reroute myself without waiting for the GPS to recalculate.  It's like that with teaching.  I want to see where my piece fits into the grand scheme, so that my students are on the correct path and avoid being rerouted (retaught) if possible.

Can i do both,  just get it done (not perfect) and still contemplate the best route possible (perfect) for my students?

Just trying to learn!

I have to say that Twitter is one of the best things to come along in education for me.  I started my Ed classes after my 3rd child was born. I had a degree and was working in the IT world. My husband told me that we were at a point in our lives that we could handle paying for college and a career change. So I jumped at the opportunity to pursue a passion of mine. 

I want to inspire kids to find something in their life that ignites their fire and pursue it!  That is where they will make the biggest impact in this world. I don't want them to go through the motions of the every day grind. Waking up at 70 and wondering what happened to all those great things they were going to accomplish. I believe there is something to be said about doing what you are supposed to do, but does it have to be dreaded? Forcing yourself to get out of bed every morning to do it?  Can you approach it from the other side and add your passion to it?  Or find what you are pasionate about and pursue it?  I want my students to live a life filled with interesting possibilities and not just a job (just over broke) that has a positive impact on them and those around them. 

For kids in school, it is the forgetable worksheet. How many worksheets do you reference by section number in your day to day interactions?  Do you even remember what was on any of those thousands of worksheets that you have completed in your education? Or the paint by numbers projects that you completed, but had no learning takeaways. I wanted something more for my students than arriving at the classroom, receiving a warm up worksheet (5 problems), taking time to review every problem for the whole class (even students that knew the material...and those that waited for me to do the thinking on the board), Reviewing last nights homework (same student scenario as warm up), Talking at them (I mean...providing a very insightful and engaging lecture on quadratic equations, where Billy is poking Sam, Sarah is snapchatting Philip across the room and Tommy is texting with Mom about the cleats he forgot at home for the game tonight) while a few took notes to refer to later, assigning homework (to be completed before lecture ended by a few,  struggled with at home by a handful, fought over at 10:30 at night with parents after a sporting event for a bunch, given up on by a group and copied from others in the locker pod before class by a cluster). But this is what was expected. All teachers of a course need to provide the same assignments and experience the same projects. 

A herd of cattle being directed from one place to another with not much thought required. Students aren't cattle. They are the leaders of tomorrow! We want them to think and make appropriate decisions. Changes that I wanted to see in our practice as an educational community were not being talked about as in depth, with as much urgency or necessity that it needed. 

When we had our first set of snow days in January, I sat down at my computer.  I started looking for something. I wasn't quite sure what it was that I was looking for...but I found it!  I found a website that referred to something called EdCampHOME. (Thanks @LS_Karl for helping put it together) Like everything else in life, I was 2 days late!  BUT, what I did find were archives of the Google Hangouts that I could watch like I was there. Fascinating!!!

So I curled up with my fav blanket and started watching. Taking notes on all the people they referenced and resources that were available. I noticed that they seemed like they had the same passions I did. Then I watched an archive that I really didn't think would help me because I am not a social media type of girl. I am fairly private in my personal life. Man was I wrong about the need for the idea they presented on that video!

I don't remember who was in that session, one may have been @MsVictoriaOlson, but it changed the world for me!  It was about Twitter. I had an account that I made years before, like we all do, and I had "tweeted" out assignments (before I started using Remind101) to my students. That idea for the use of Twitter totally morphed into something amazing that day!  I feverishly started trying to understand and use this new tool. Totally clueless, but with reckless abandon, I started trying to understand this hashtag thing. So many tweeps tried to help me! 

Then someone re-tweeted a google doc (http://goo.gl/oqHneq) and it was on. This doc contained the hashtags, days of the week and times that Twitter chats were run by inspiring teachers in any subject area you could want!  

I took the Leap and refuse to turn back!  The educators that I have connected with have the same passion as I do for educating students and more!  I found a world where my ideas are normal! And other teachers push my thinking again and again! It has led to so many fabulous people and opportunities to grow as a person in the last six months than my last 45 years on this earth!  It is such a great place to be!