December Reflections

December is a time for reflection on the year past, and even though I'm retired, this has been an amazing year of professional growth and challenges. My OneWord for 2017 was 'stretch' and I vowed to stretch myself, personally and professionally, out of my comfort zone. I've continued to 'stretch' this year as well.

Rather than list all of them, I've selected four instances that pushed me out of my comfort zone professionally this year:

1. Finished my doctorate! I began this journey before I retired, knowing that I would need a continued intellectual challenge in my retirement. Boy, was it challenging!  But I did it - even though it was difficult and there were times when I wanted to quit, I did it!  Walking across the stage at Western's convocation and meeting all of my online classmates and professors in person was a real thrill. My doctoral work explored Enacting Self-regulation Expectations in Kindergarten Programs Using A Distributed Leadership Framework, and I have published a few articles based on this work. I hope to continue publishing in 2019.


2. Speaking of publishing, my book, Lab Class: Professional Learning Through Collaborative Inquiry and Student Observation became available in August 2018 and it was chosen as Learning Forward's Summer Book Club selection. What a thrill to hold a copy of it in my hands!  It is based on work that we did in our board, engaging as co-learners with educators using a collaborative inquiry approach to professional learning. Going through the publication process with the team at Corwin Press was exciting and scary at the same time - lots of revisions, lots of questions - but totally worth it in the end.

3. I was a guest on not one, but two podcasts on voicEd.com.  I'd never been on a podcast before, and they are kind of challenging.  You're talking with other people whom you can't see. I've read that over 90% of communication is non-verbal and in a podcast you don't have any of those visual cues - head nods, eye gaze, etc - to support the conversation. Luckily the others with whom I was chatting were very experienced podcasters and the hour flew by.  Thanks to Stephen Hurley & Doug Peterson for inviting me to join them on This Week In Ontario Edublogs, and to Stephen Hurley & Susan Hopkins for allowing me to join them on the Voices of Self-Regulation podcast.

4. I have presented at lots of conferences over the years, both locally and provincially, but this year I pushed myself out of my comfort zone and did something different.  Instead of presenting a workshop, I facilitated a conversation which is much more open and fluid.  And, to make it even more challenging, it wasn't at a Kindergarten conference or a self-reg conference (which are my strengths) but at the Bringing IT Together Conference, which is a technology focused conference with lots of intermediate and secondary teachers. I was worried that no one would attend my session, or that the people who did attend wouldn't have much to say.  I needn't have worried - I had a great group and they engaged in a very fulsome conversation.

Here's hoping that 2019 offers many more opportunities to continue to stretch and grow!


Thanks to Lynn Thomas for inspiring this blog post, and to Doug Peterson who posted the link to her blog in This Week in Ontario Edublogs.  I always get so inspired by the blogs he shares!