Illustration by John Antonios; image courtesy of www.njutningtillsalu.com
Well my blog is not fancy yet as per the excellent suggestions we received yesterday, and I am too tired right now to start its fancy-fi-cation, but I need to talk about what I expect to gain before I start gaining too much and then it will be hard to look back and remember what I expected to gain in the first place. That sounded more complicated than necessary.
Where was I? Oh yes. What I hope to gain. I am remembering back to why I first applied for this. I am an English teacher, so wasn’t sure if what seemed to be a STEM program would find me valuable. But they did! And now I see why. Even though its roots are in STEM (I could have said its stem is in STEM, but I thought that would be too much), this fellowship is unique because it takes educators of all grades, subjects, perspectives, and walks of life and pushes them out of the classroom to both enrich their own teaching and help them become innovative leaders who reach out to others.
That is exactly why I want to do this. I am the type (and, other fellows, I now know from talking to you all this week that you are the EXACT SAME WAY!) who, when I hear a problem, my mind starts automatically brainstorming what I can do about it. Some in the field of education have, understandably, begun feeling that they have no power or say, that they can only control what is in their classrooms, and increasingly, maybe not even that. When something changes or a problem arises, we sometimes feel we can only complain to each other, hold fast, and hope it blows over soon.
I wanted this fellowship so much because I think there is another way. I truly believe that in order to feel more powerful, we need to be informed. We can change education from the inside out by not retreating into our classrooms, but by making ourselves part of the process.
From this fellowship, I expect to gain the skills I need to give shape to my philosophy. I need to learn how to gather complex information and disseminate it clearly and diplomatically. More than anything, I want the skill that enables me to hear teachers with problems and make them realize that they can work toward a solution.