This summer is the second for #saskedchat. Over the past year, #saskedchat has grown and expanded from a fledgling chat where only a few people showed up (in fact, the chat was sometimes a chat of two) to one that has a regular base of participants who come together each Thursday at share with each other and learn from one another.
Fanning a Spark
In Jana Scott Lindsay’s post Dream Big – The Passion of Learning, Jana explores how finding a passion can take many different forms and can come at different times in our lives. Sometimes it’s important for us to Dream Big, to allow ourselves to think greater than just now, where we are and not worry about the end result.
For me, #saskedchat began as a spark, an idea that there must be some other teachers passionate about learning and sharing that learning in a twitter chat. I wanted to share my passion for integrating technology in learning but bringing together other teachers in the province to connect, collaborate and contribute to a conversation about learning. Since the chat began in March of 2013, it has grown and expanded in ways I could not have imagined.
#skblog15 – Summer Blogging
In order to expand and explore how #saskedchat could support teachers over the summer, I decided to invite anyone who wanted to explore a topic to suggest a blogging topic and chat topic for each week this summer. I want others to share their passions through connecting with other connected teachers but especially with other teachers near them. I hope that it encourages teachers to blog and share their passions, frustrations, fears and accomplishments. To celebrate the incredible and awesome work that teachers are doing all around and build a Personal Learning Network (PLN) that includes others from close to home.
This week, our topic comes from @fiteach sparked by her passion for literature and libraries –
What lights your fire? That is the theme for this week’s blog post.
I have a Big Dream about finding ways to bring passionate teachers within the province together to share and learn, collaborate and contribute to each other’s growth and learning, helping them to share their own Big Dream(s) about learning, their students and their classrooms and schools. Although I am passionate about using technology and transforming teaching and learning, I am more passionate about teachers being given the opportunity to grow and learn and share that learning with others and #saskedchat provides one way for teachers to do this no matter where they are, what they are doing, what they teach or where they teach.
What’s your spark?
Often we don’t share our dreams with many people, if we share them at all. I know I don’t because I’m worried and afraid of what others will say.
They’ll laugh. Or make fun of them.
Maybe they’ll say something about them being a waste of time or being silly.
Often it’s because I’m afraid that people will judge me – and find me lacking.
Many of us have been conditioned to think that only special people get to dream BIG dreams and make them happen and the rest of us just get to watch. Oh, we are TOLD we can do anything but, in fact, we are SHOWN that it’s only for a select few and, eventually, this impacts what we come to believe we can accomplish. Often, people give up, shelve their dreams and fall into the routines of life having traded their dreams and passions for a career with safety and little risk.
My hope is that #saskedchat will be a place where teachers can share their Big Dreams and support others in doing the same. And so I share one of the things that fires me up and a Big Dream because in sharing our dreams, I believe, we take the first step in making them come true.
I Wonder
Schools often have a vision that involves helping students to become all they can be or something similar yet policies and rules often set out to do just the opposite, to establish conformity and following directions.
How can schools support students’ Big Dreams?
How does sharing our Big Dreams and Passions help others? Help ourselves?
What’s your Big Dream and Passion? Do you share them?