No, I haven’t abandoned this space. I’ve actually been writing my brain off in other places…offline as in two books on the horizon, one of them part of a most interesting series that I’m putting together with Solution Tree…and online at EML where I find myself (joyfully) spending a lot more of my time these days. Couple that with an intense season of boys and girls varsity basketball and travel and some other life stuff and it’s no wonder I haven’t spent much time here.
Fact is, I’m spending less and less time in these social spaces it seems. I’m thinking that may not be the case in a couple of months when my plate clears a bit, but I do want to note how different this feels…not checking Twitter a dozen times a day…not feeling compelled to reflect on the blog…basically turning off my Facebook account (not that I ever used that much anyway)…diving into Feedly only a couple of times a week…spending time reading more actual books than blogs (and thinking…a lot). I’m almost feeling like a connected disconnected person, not a lurker, per se, but someone with a bit different perspective than I had two or three years ago.
Maybe it’s because my worldview on the idea of school and classrooms continues to evolve. Maybe it’s because that changed worldview makes it more difficult for me to find relevance in the current streams and communities I’m a part of. Maybe it’s because my bar for change has been increasingly notched higher, and that using technology and social media in schools isn’t the main focus of that conversation any longer.
What’s amazes me is how long it’s taken me to get here, a place where a lot of other people have been for decades (if not centuries.) I’ve spend a lot of my life as an educator truly ignorant about education and learning. Ironic, isn’t it, that my “education” failed me. My “education” around education never even remotely presented the worldview that I’ve come to know now. Maybe that was an act of self-preservation…
Anyway.
I still have a long way to go.