Brand New Day
// August 11th, 2009 // Comments
I sometimes have a problem allowing myself to see the good in things that are happening in my life. A week ago I was uncertain about my path and if I would be teaching beyond subbing this fall. I just got offered and accepted a job in the local district of Lincoln Public Schools and I am excited, nervous and hopeful. I will be an Instructional Technology Coach, which is a newly created position. I feel a bit as if I about to enter the Wonka Factory and am not sure what to expect. There is a lot of room for creative development so I am excited. I want to say thank you to all in my personal learning network who have helped bring me to this point. Thinking about and reflecting on education with you all has been huge to my professional development. Tomorrow I will meet the rest of the team I will be working on and I am looking forward to being a change agent in the district. I will keep you all posted as to how things look and what cool new projects are coming along in my realm. I know now that I will be expanding my digital presence and working to integrate tech into curricula. Collaboration is the name of the game on this block. Again thanks and to all the new teachers out there this year, good luck and keep in touch.
“We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams”
Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka
Dale
8 Responses to “Brand New Day”
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- Michelle Baldwin said: Nice post, Dale. I like the connection to "motion"...
- admin said: To muddy the water some more, Joe, what does one d...
- Joe said: Passion helps, and is indeed a benefit to the teac...
- Lindsay said: How crazy to think about how far technology has co...
- Lindsay said: I am experiencing summer fever almost as much as I...
- admin said: The technology class will show where the light swi...
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Congratulations! We could have almost been cohorts…decided to stay in my building. Come to our school PLEASE!!!
Hi Dale,
I’m currently going to school to hopefully become a teacher someday and I was interested by some of your word choice. In regards to your position you said that you are now an IT “coach”. I once had a math teacher who preferred to be called a math coach, even though he was not a coach like we often define them (sports). Anyways, he was one of the better teachers I ever had and one of the reasons I am getting into teaching. I was wondering if “coach” was the actually term used for your position or if there is some sort of reason you consider yourself a coach instead of the generic term “teacher”. As someone who plans to coach and participated in sports I know they are very similar, yet still different words. Also, I like your view how teachers are “agents of change”. I hope I will never feel comfortable maintaining the status quo and being satisfied with the way things are and will in fact be proactive like it appears you are. I just found those two items interesting and relatable to the kind of teacher I hope to be someday.
Thank you for that
Wow this sounds really awesome! As a college student that just finished a practicum I am really excited to get into actual teaching. I bet it is a great feeling going from subbing to an actual teaching job from the standpoint that you can do so much more with the kids. I’m sure it will be nice to be able to plan your own curriculum rather than follow a sheet left by the teacher. Although there are many positives to actual teaching, I think substituting is a great thing to get involved in after retiring. It maybe sounds weird, but the last few days of my practicum there was a retired teaching subbing in the district. He said it was great because it was still a way to make money, he got to keep in contact with kids, didn’t have to plan lessons, and didn’t have to take anything home with him at the end of the day. Once again a late congrats on your job and thought I would just reflect on some of my experience with the pros and cons of teaching vs. substituting.
I hope the job is coming along well so far this year. It’s cool to see that entire jobs are being created to incorporate technology into the classroom. That’s a neat improvement that I think is important and relevant to today’s society.
Hello, my name is Melissa Crabb and I am currently a freshman secondary science education major at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I am very excited to embark on this career path. There are so many new things in the education world. I was wondering what an IT coach is and what they do? Thank you for your time in helping explain and good luck with your new position!
Hi, I’m Yue, a sophomore at the university of Nebraska-Lincoln. Chinese education is my major and I think most of the people here don’t know that our university has such a major! Yes, it is a brand new major and it means if I’m going to become a teacher here in Lincoln, there should be a lot of room for creative development for me as well. I’m exited about the freedom that I might have but also, there are some worriers. Like there is nearly no experienced teacher for me to learn form and what expect do people have on a foreign language like Chinese.
It seems so exciting from going to sub. to an actual teacher. My sister is 3 years older than me and is currently doing a little sub. teaching and hopefully going to be working in the Lincoln school district next year. I am ready to go out and find my job. I am majoring in Family Science and would like to be a councilor in a middle school however i have to teacher for two years before I can do that. I have recently heard that schools are making cuts and one of them may be how many councilors they have. This makes me a little worried but yet I will also have my teaching degree so I suppose I could just keep teaching if all else fails.
As for the Instructional Technology teaching, I am currently in a class like this at UNL. We are only using mac computers which is a change for me. I like learning about the different things they have on this computer yet I wish that some of the stuff we were learning was a little more complicated. We have made powerpoints and flow charts that I feel I have been doing since about middle school. I understand technology is changing, so shouldn’t we be keeping up with it?
As a future teacher this really excites me even more to start teaching. I coach baseball at Lincoln Southeast High School and working with kids from the sports aspect has made me more excited to teach also. Getting to work with kids is such a great aspect of life and how you can change and mold their futures and hope to have an impact on their lives. Teaching is the one job that is over looked and not appreciated enough in society. Moving from high school to college was such a dramatic change, and then moving to college to teaching someday will be an even bigger change. So much pressure having those kids lives in your hands is a great. I know I still have a lot to learn before I become a teacher but its a long process that will eventually be worth the ride.