I sit here on this Memorial Day weekend working on my final blog post as part of my Kenan fellowship and thinking back upon the year, which I cannot believe is nearly finished! It’s been a great school year and amazing time as a Kenan Fellow. I have grown more than I ever thought as a result of it.
The focus of this blog post is supposed to be about using this forum for reflection. For the majority of our fellowship, we had a required monthly blog post, each with a different topic/focus. Dutifully, I made my posts on time (or at least mostly on time) although I found some of the prompts repetitive. That being said, I took away great value in the use of blogging for reflection. So much so that I started requiring my students to do a weekly blog post of their own as part of their grade. It was generally related to what we learned that week or required reflection on an assigned reading as a primer for the coming week’s lessons. While they moaned and groaned about it, much like we did at times, in the end they stated it was a good practice for them to participate in as well. It helped them cement their knowledge, work on their writing skills, be creative and express themselves. And, it gave me an important tool to use with all of my students in the future. I will definitely continue this practice with them!
Doing this blog has also changed the way I move forward on a personal level as well. Reflection is an important tool for any career but doubly so with teaching. It allows us to realize what worked well in our classrooms and understand what was a flop. As a result, we can then implement changes to do better the next go around. However, I will not be continuing on this site after this post. In order to make my life easier to manage and bring everything together, I have added a new page to my school website to continue a weekly blog where I can reflect, share information/experiences, and express myself. So if you have enjoyed reading my thoughts here, check them out over there from now on. They will be less guided as well as show more of myself in terms of what I find to be important with respect to my personal life and professional career. They will also be more frequent…at least during the school year.
So as this year of active learning for me as a Kenan Fellow draws to a close…all I can say is thank you for a great program and introducing me to so many awesome educators and mentors. This has been a truly valuable experience for me professionally and personally. Thank you, thank you, thank you!