After spending a little more than a week with my fellow fellows and meeting my mentor to begin developing our project I can say very decisively that what I’m most excited to gain from this experience is relationships.  I am widening my network and I am not going to be the only person whose life if affected.  The relationships I will foster throughout this experience will change my students’ lives.  I am becoming a better teacher by collaborating with other fellows and my mentor.

Looking ahead toward our week at NCCAT I know that I will not only be strengthening the professional relationships I’ve built in the last week, but I will also be building personal relationships as well (and not just with my other DPI fellows friends). Pushing yourself to be an innovative educator is hard work. If there is something I’ve learned about teachers that strive to be the best it’s that they’re all the same kind of crazy.  Looking forward to NCCAT I am prepared to meet 40 new colleagues/friends that at the surface seem like completely unique individuals.  I anticipate, however, that the personal relationships among fellows will come pretty easily because there is something that is fundamentally the same about each of these people that make them the sorts of people that would pursue a Kenan Fellowship in the face of all the adversity that is public education in North Carolina.

In the last few months those of us in public education have felt bombarded by the bad news in North Carolina’s schools.  As we are required to meet increasingly rigorous standards we see our most valuable resource stripped away.  People.  Warm bodies won’t do.   We need people who care.  You don’t have to be a Kenan Fellow to be Kenan Fellow crazy; those are the people we need.  It seems there are some pretty influential people in our state who don’t get that.