In the wake of....

I've been watching, listening and following #flipcon12 and feeling overwhelmed. Oh, yeah, and I got the book by Bergmann and Sams, just to push me over the deep end or into the deep end or deeper into the deep end.

There was a time when I was kid and we went to the old pool in Mason City. It sat on the flood plain of the Winnebago River, east of "the high school, across the bridge on US Highway 18. I'm sure you all know what I'm talking about. I don't know when the last time it had been used, but there it sat in all it's green-ness. Full of rainwater or  whatever it was full of....it was not a safe place to be for a bunch of 8 to 12 year old boys.

I got to close, fell in, got pushed....I don't remember, but I was in the deep end of a slime hole. I was in over my head and in a panic. Thrashing about and probably close to death (or not) one of the guys pulled me out with a stick.

So, that is how I feel right now. Panic stricken and waiting for someone to hold a stick out to me.

I've followed the tweets and been thinking that would be really cool to be there in Chicago, but at the same time, I don't know if I'm ready for this.

Can you be ready? It seems like you need to get pushed or slip or whatever and away you go.

Guess I gotta take that first step to the deepend of the pool.

The bad beginning....

The school year is about to end.

But a school year never really ends.

You just wind up with new kids, with different brains and needs.

So my question to myself this summer, is how will I be ready for these new brains. Their brains are not like my brain.
I can see that.

Mind melding is out. Plus, none of them know what mind melding is, anyway.

So, the end is the beginning of something new. I'm about to jump into a new journey of education. I'm going to flip some of my classes next school season. Maybe it will be a season of sitcoms or maybe dramas or perhaps even documentaries.

I've come to the realization through immense metacognition, that it has to be more than the "video". It truly has to be a change of thought. Steve Kelly testified in front of the Michigan Deptment of Education about change. Watch it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXlh8w0azXs He had one statment that grabbed my thoughts, that how he was teaching was good enough for 1997, but he wasn't teaching in 1997.

I'm not teaching in 1997. Those students are in their 30's now. They have kids of their own.

Those kids will not be going to school in 1997, maybe 2007 or more like now in 2012.

I think that Steve has it right.