What do you hope to gain from this Kenan Fellows Program experience?

It is certainly an honor to be chosen as a Kenan Fellow… but why give up ‘free’time? What are my hopes and dreams for this experience?
I have two major goals:
1 – to improve as an educator
2 – to immerse myself in online world language resources and improve my awareness of them as I tag them for the HomeBase online resources

Rumor has it that the Kenan Fellows are a top notch group of educators. What a gift to interact with such a group. Learning from and with inspiring peers is powerful. You may have heard the saying from Euripides, “One can judge a man by the company he keeps.” The PD version would include women, of course. It is wonderful to have the opportunity to keep company with this group.

A week of PD just for me is another great gift. When does the world stop long enough to jump deeply into new rivers? The river rafting may be a high point for group bonding and outdoor experiences, but the new river we shall enter will hopefully refresh, inspire, cleanse and redirect.

The opportunity for me to take my brain to the garage for an oil change or overhaul is rare. I may be at the 60,000 mile check-up point and I have the hope that this Kenan Fellowship is a top notch, quality service center. I look forward to receiving PD from leaders in their field. I look forward to interacting with superior educators.

I am very aware that we are in the midst of a renaissance, a time of rebirth, in terms of global views, tech tools and education. My frame of reference sees THE Renaissance (from the 14th – 17th century) as a rear view mirror event that is one point in time. It is viewed as a time of enlightenment. Oddly enough, this intense period of change carries with it many emotions. One day, it is the top of the roller coaster thinking of the new potential that one has. Another day, it is the uphill climb struggling to imagine how to stay abreast with the swift rate of change. Did people in THE Renaissance feel the range of emotions we feel? Did they feel the exhilaration one day and the exhaustion the next? Some days my head is exploding trying to handle the number of ideas that hit me at once. Other days, I am immobilized wondering where to begin, how to stay on track and which of many paths to take.

Society seems to have an inability to give words to new experiences. When the bomb exploded in Boston, as a society, we watched but only little by little did we find words to talk about what happened. Language gives meaning to our experiences. It was the newscasters and our own conversations with friends, co-workers and family that gave birth to language for these very new experiences, new worries, new viewpoints and new expectations. So, through this fellowship, I hope to find the language (my language) to better name the societal, global, technological and educational experiences we are living. I hope to clarify the steps and direction/s I want to take. I hope to learn new techniques for teaching our students in our classrooms and the teachers with whom I interact regularly.

In terms of my specific fellowship, I look forward to researching and immersing myself in online world language resources. As our district transitions into ChromeBooks and a focus on online web tools,

it will be wonderful to discover and gather resources to share with the world language teachers I

support in our county. I look forward to sharing the resources I am currently aware of in HomeBase, as well as contributing to the core of world language resources in HomeBase that will hopefully be helpful in our state.