As summer comes to an end with one more week to go before we come back together to prepare for the first week of school, which starts the day after Labor Day, I thought I’d reflect on all the great things that I’ve done. I am grateful that this summer was so much better than last summer. I was much more worried last summer and feeling like I couldn’t do enough to prepare to support my students and their families in any way I could. Honestly, once the vaccine came out and many of us here got vaccinated I thought this fall was going to be a lot more like normal, pre-COVID, in terms of having all our kids back in class. Okay, that much seems to be true – we are planning to bring all our kids back. I am saddened that the Delta Variant is infecting children and worry for my students since I teach 6th grade and some 5th graders this year and they are 10 and 11 years of age and not yet 12 and able to get vaccinated. Until we meet next week all I know for sure is that we are planning, like everyone else, to bring all our students back full time, fully masked, and keeping them 3 feet apart as much as possible.
Years ago I wrote a blog post reflecting on how difficult it is for me to spend enough time reading. During the school year reading for me happens in short bursts reading tweets and blog posts in the morning before I go to school and in the evening before I go to bed. I don’t even try to read full on books because every time I’ve tried, I don’t get very far. So summer is my chance to catch up reading and that is a never-ending process! I’ve got lots of books I’d like to read so I choose which ones to read each summer. This summer I only read one fiction book for fun, Ready Player Two. I had been holding on to that one waiting until summer to read it so as soon as school let out, I read it. It did not disappoint – I thoroughly enjoyed it and without giving away too much, I hope, it has me thinking about space travel and how humans will ever be able to reach other solar systems.
It’s way easier for me to binge watch series on my iPhone than it is to read books so I caught up on the following series (mostly because then I only have to pay for one month instead of paying for multiple months for shows that only put out one episode per week):
- The Mandalorian Season 2 (I LOVED all the amazing characters they introduced this season!)
- WandaVision (I couldn’t wait to watch this one and it was SO GOOD!)
- The Falcon and Winter Soldier (I enjoyed this one, too, and now I understand the difference between the Snap – when Thanos snapped half of all living things out of existence, and the blip – when Ironman brought them all back five years after the Snap.)
- Loki (I wasn’t going to watch this one, I’m not a huge Loki fan but I saw the first episode and got hooked. It was actually quite good and I’m glad I watched it.)
- Star Trek Discovery Season 3 (I was waiting for this one too and I can’t believe where they went this season. I’m still in shock but at least I understand why they did it.)
- The Titans Seasons 1 and 2, started Season 3 (I just stumbled on this series and actually got hooked! LOL)
I also spent some time this summer doing work-related stuff but I did them all for fun so it didn’t seem like work! You know the saying about loving what you do so it’s not really work. I got to join a group of amazing trainers to help people renewing their National Boards. I have been a renewal trainer and now I’m updated to train for the new Maintenance of Certification (MoC) for National Board Certified Teachers to continue being National Board Certified! Our state’s education association puts on some high quality workshops for teachers and I’ve been doing a lot of my facilitating through the WEA.
I also co-facilitated a Sports in STEM workshop with the amazing Tammie Schrader and that went very well, too. I was even able to join on a ScIC6 session with Steve Isaacs on Fortnite in the Science Classroom!
As a participant I joined the Games4Change 2021 Virtual Festival, the WeVideo Community Summit, What’s Best For Kids Event, ScIC6 Science is Cool event, Inspire I2E’s Clubs to Curriculum Minecraft Camp, and most recently the Microsoft Minecraft Esports Teacher Academy. Those were fun so I didn’t consider them “work.” I even got to run in my first face-to-face race since March of 2020, the Galloping Gertie Half Marathon over the Tacoma Narrows Bridge! It was SO nice to be able to run with other people again (yay, vaccination!).
This year I chose the following four books to read for my educational fun:
I read this one, Blended Learning with Google, first because the book came with an online course: Shake Up Learning Blended Learning with Google online course. It was nice getting to read the book and feel like I was participating in a book study since I don’t join those during the school year because I struggle with keeping up with all the reading. I love learning all I can about Google because we have Google Enterprise at my district and there is so much we do with Google! Plus, blended learning is my thing so I always look for ways to do it better.
When I heard that Katie Novak (I attended one of her workshops hosted by our education association and she is amazing) and Catlin Tucker (I’ve been learning from her on Twitter and through her blog for years) wrote a book on UDL AND blended learning, and I just had to read it. It was great and I highly recommend it!
This book, Teach Like a Pirate, I’ve actually been meaning to read for years and I finally got around to it and I’m glad I did! Reading this book just motivates me to continue to innovate and keep pushing myself out of my comfort zone to make school a truly great experience for all my students.
Finally, this is another book I saw on Twitter that Michael Matera and John Meehan, two other educators that I learn a LOT from, wrote and I had to get it! Plus, the title, Fully Engaged, had me right off the bat. After reading this book I am finally going to start the school year by having kids roll characters for our Classcraft class game. I got inspired and I’m going for it! More on that on my next post. 🙂
So summer may be ending, and I’m getting very nervous indeed with all the unknowns and hearing what all the schools that are already in session have been going through, but I am grateful that I had a great summer with my family and that we were able to get out and spend some time together having fun. Especially since my daughter is going to start her freshman year at the University of Washington and we’ll be moving her into her dorm on Sept 19! My wife and I are also dealing with that! So yes, I need to take stock of all the great things I did this summer as I prepare for another COVID school year.
