In January 2014 I finished reading Drive by Daniel Pink and was thinking of how to apply this in my classroom, but also in my teaching. I realized that I had the autonomy I needed to be successful and enjoy my career, but I wasn't sure how to do it. I chose to apply for the LearnZillion Dream Team because I was teaching using flipped videos. Plus I really liked LearnZillion. I completed both parts of the application, followed the rubrics to the best of my ability, and had submitted an awesome application. I just had to wait until early April to hear back about my acceptance and then go down to New Orleans June 6-8. My career was about to take off, I was actually going to accomplish something worthwhile that people would notice, and it would make a big impact on education.
Meanwhile, my wife and I were searching for jobs to leave North Carolina. This was for a variety of reasons beyond just the pay and treatment, but that isn't a topic I plan on covering in this post. Our search was focused in on several counties in Maryland.
Then April came and we had spring break that we spent the first several days in Baltimore exploring the area and attending a job fair. It was great, I took my son to his first baseball game. Although I still hope he becomes a Met's fan. I also am sure some people would debate calling a game with a DH baseball. Again, a topic for another post. I did get to play with my new iPad Air (see the picture) which helped me become connected.
We returned home from Baltimore and that Friday night I received the rejection email from LearnZillion. How in the world did I not get accepted? I tried to ask them, but I guess when you have thousands of applicants and only take 200 it is hard to provide feedback to everyone. I moved on by trying to find my own feedback. I finally went to Twitter. I had an account, had heard about the Twitter chats for education, and had even followed a bunch of educators. I just never really tweeted, or looked beyond the few people I had followed. I honestly didn't think I knew enough, had proven myself, or was capable of putting myself out there. Especially after the huge rejection I just received. This time I wanted to see and figured it couldn't be any worse. Maybe I was an awful teacher and just didn't know it.
That weekend I got on Twitter (my new iPad really helped to encourage this) and started looking for education chats to just read and see how I could hold up. I found a list and later a calendar that I enjoy too. I also found Sean Junkins who was moderating several chats that weekend. That is where I got started. I planned to just lurk, but found I actually had ideas to contribute. People agreed with and challenged my thinking, but it was positive and fun. I even realized that weekend that I was not asking good questions in my classroom. I started to connect and reflect to become better.
As I found more educators on Twitter, I came back to some ideas I had to start the school year involving Augmented Reality. I wanted to use it in my room, but we had these computers that were older than the kids. At least we were 1:1 and had devices at all. What I realized though was that close to half of my kids had their own devices at home they could use. Although our school network wasn't the best I decided to go forward with using Augmented Reality. Thanks largely impart to the passion and no excuses attitude from the Two Guys Brad Waid and Drew Minock.
This is what changed it all. My confidence grew, my passion grew, I became more and more connected on Twitter. I realized this is why I became a teacher. All of the other nonsense became easier to deal with. I found ways to get it all done and still have time to focus on my passion of meaningful technology integration in the classroom.
The big change started on a Friday night in May. I was going through my Twitter feed, after my son had gone to bed (7:00 bed time is wonderful), and I saw a blog post by Todd Nesloney about #YouMatter day. I thought it was neat and a really easy idea. I had heard about it on Twitter some, but am just not a very sentimental person and probably don't tell people that they matter enough. You can read most of this story on my #YouMatter day post.
I left out part of that story because when I wrote it I was going through a lot and wanted to keep most of it private so my wife and I could work through this process. The day after we had planned to have our own #YouMatter day I decided I should put my name in the hat for a position at Navasota Intermediate school where Todd was going to become principal next year. We were already looking to relocate and applying for jobs like crazy, so what was one more? The location wasn't ideal, but honestly, if LearnZillion wouldn't take me why would Todd Nesloney? I applied on Saturday and quickly was offered a position at the school. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure if this was best for my wife and son. It would be crazy to just up and move to Texas for a teaching job. I mean I can teach anywhere, right? Even if I decided this was best for us, what if my wife couldn't get a job?
Then I realized this was more than a teaching job, this was a chance to connect, to reflect, and to join up with like minded passionate educators. Todd was probably one of my first follows in Twitter way back when I was looking for ideas on flipping my classroom. Not to mention that Drew Minock and Brad Waid practically worship him and talk about how great he is in every episode of their pod cast.
It was the weekend of the LearnZillion Dream Team and I was about to get on a plane. Not to go to New Orleans, but this time to go out to Navasota, TX. I had downloaded Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess and was ready to travel. I actually finished this book in my trip and it made me finally realize what I was missing when I applied to LearnZillion and what I now had that made me a much better teacher. I now had passion. I was already reflective, I was becoming connected, and now I realized I was passionate about what I was doing. These three are why I have renamed my blog.
After the trip I was sold. There was nothing, not even 1:1 iPads or some other device, that would fit me better than working at Navasota Intermediate. Unfortunately, we were close to the deadline. What was I going to do? How awkward would ISTE be if I had to tell Todd no after making him wait all this time? I couldn't do anything but plan for the worst and hope for the best. I was applying for jobs in Maryland and interviewing still as a backup, but knew where I needed to be. It was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. Fortunately, in a crazy and exiting way that I couldn't possibly have imagined it worked out and my wife was offered a job. I let Todd know, and now we are headed to Texas.
Here is what I learned about not just teaching, but life from this journey. Be connected, be passionate, and be reflective. If you do those things you will always be successful. This is my first "rebranding" and I'll probably have a few more over the years as my ideas develop. I am really looking forward to the journey the next few years hold.
Mr. Donnelly, I appreciate you laying all this out there like you did. My wife is also an educator and we've had our share of rough, unknown, unpredictable times as well. I could feel the similar emotions when reading your post. I, too, have connected with Todd and I can only imagine that your experience at Navasota is going to be an awesome one!
ReplyDelete@Mr_Oldfield