One Year Later

Today my blog is one year old. Happy Birthday!
I did a Google search the other day as to why we celebrate birthdays. The answered ranged from thanking G-D and celebrating life to reflecting on the past year. One post I saw actually said we shouldn't celebrate birthdays since we are getting older and closer to death. Way too morbid for me.

Anyway what would you do for a blogs birthday. I thought perhaps the most appropriate thing to do would be to reflect, give thanks, and offer goals for the next year.

So as I reflect I have come a long way. I have developed an amazing PLN through Twitter and I use both Twitter and my PLN to make me a better educator. I am a member of Connected Principal and will be one of the the Presenters at the RSCON3 conference this weekend.

I have also started to blog with edublog and my blog is called Beyond the Classroom Walls.

I want to thank my amazing PLN and I can't name all of you but you have all helped me grow and you are more than just a PLN but you are friends.

However I also realize I have so much to learn and a teacher, administrator, leader, father and husband.

I encourage you to spend a few minutes on Twitter searching the hashtags of #edchat, #cpchat, #rscon3 to get a glimpse of the great educators out there and the progressive and amazing things they are doing.

Learning is a never ending process and we all need to be striving to learn more but as I learned a year ago you need to take risks. If you would have asked me 13 months ago would be on Twitter and blogging the answer would have been an emphatic NO.

Now as I and many others are preparing for the new school year I need to think in what areas do I want to grow as an educational leader. Is it with engaging my students more with technology, or maybe incorporating more 21st Century Skills. The list can go on. One thing I know is that I will need to take some risks.So my hope is that in a year when I celebrate two years of blogging I can reflect and share with you the areas in which I have grown.

Looking forward another year of growing and learning ( and risk taking) together.