Darin, you can’t talk about yesterday, you have to keep moving forward, remember?? 🙂

Yesterday was a tremendous day of learning for me professionally, and it had me jacked up to be at school today.  First, I spend the day at our local education agency with three awesome presentors: Jarod (@jbormann3), Bev (@B_Berns), and Melissa (@mwick23).  These three are working with two different groups, teaching and guiding us about blended learning.  Yesterday was about laying a foundation for us to build on for the next two days.  I left feeling pretty good about where I’m at, but seeing many possibilities in blending my 6th grade classroom in the core content areas.  Our schedule continues to get crunched, and to be able to push out content to my students to look through and practice with will only create deeper, more rich types of learning later on.  I’ve toyed with this a little bit, but by working three full days, things will be come more much more clear.

Second, I caught the second half hour of Arkansas Ed Chat (#ARKedchat Thursdays at 8:00 P.M. CST).  I love this chat for a number of reasons, but last night’s topic: flipping your classroom! #score  I continued to build on my learning from the day with some great folks who knew their stuff, and enjoyed my little dose of southern hospitality! 🙂

Finally, Missouri Ed Chat (#Moedchat Thursdays at 9:00 P.M. CST).  This chat rivals Iowa Ed Chat for the number of people who show up and the out of this world minds who are in attendance.  Last night’s chat was just about throwing out ideas for the future: future chats, our own professional futures, things that could happen with those in Missouri.  We talked flipped classroom, genius hour, Teach Like A Pirate, standards based grading, setting goals, and on and on!  If this chat can take 10% of what was thrown out there last night, wow, what a powerful educational resource, both the chat AND the archives!   I also participate in a Voxer group with come of these educators, and they know their stuff!  Between this group and Iowa educators Voxer group I’m in, I can see how far I’ve come as an educator, but can see how much further I still have to go!

So, my happy thought for the day – Thursday’s learning.  It was one of those days that I can use to pull myself back up on those down days as each area, while different, certainly has or will impact what I do as a teacher.

And I wouldn’t want it any other way! 🙂