What was the highlight of my week at Kenan? Where to begin, do I start with adventures and giants, or discovering life under river rock, speckled salamanders, building a brands, delving (dwelling? or new word dwelving?) into my personality to make discoveries about myself and how I relate to others. I think the adventures were great, the discoveries fascinating, but the absolute highlight was getting a chance to meet all the other wonderful Kenan Fellows. Meeting these people let me know that there are more people out there driven to help our kids and that they are spread across our great state. I am excited to be around this group of teachers.
This professional development experience has been different because of these teachers starting their Kenan Journey and the teacher guiding us at Kenan. They are raw, encouraging, fun and exciting and it fills me with pride to get a chance to work with them and learn from them. I think highly of all the colleagues I have worked with as a teacher, but at Kenan I have found a kinship or a like minded attitude about building a better future and turning better into the best (not just a 4H nod, I think these teacher embody this motto).
For me I plan to use a lot from the ideas in the professional development lessons, like I am definitely going to do the painter tape murals with my kids. I love the way it allows students to engage in their vision of what they want out of their education and allows them to reshape their vision throughout the semester. But, I am excited about engaging my kids with a personal teaching brand we developed with Mark Townley. For me it was three words Think, Build, Do, that I plan on integrating into mission statement through out my class. I think it will help my kids engage better with the way I teach and it excites me.