Day 30: Trusting The Gush #AprilBlogADay Challenge

Day 30 Topic: How has #Aprilblogaday impacted your practice? 

Tom Romano wrote, "Trust the gush". This process has been all about letting the words flow, trusting the process, and the community to embrace my work.

This year at my school, we began the slow and clumsy move to Mastery Based Learning.  It's been challenging, even difficult at times mostly because my (and the staff) understanding of how and why it works was unclear.  We began because, like many things we experience as teachers in schools, because administration brought this to the staff as a school wide endeavor. I am not against it and have tried my best to understand the nuances of MBL.  I don't feel like I have done a great job with this.  All that said, this morning, as I sat on the subway reading Greg Barnes' book Assessment 3.0, my brain was growing and stretching.  When I got to school, I stopped in to talk to one of our CS teachers. As I am learning CS lends itself, not unlike ELA to the feedback based classroom.  Mastery Based Learning and Assessment was becoming more clear.  The April Blog A Day Challenge made this possible.  

This journey has been career changing.  I wrote all 30 days (one day was a post to my other blog, so 29 posts on Teaching and Learning)...I have pushed my self and my thinking about what I do and how I do it.  

I have been pushing my colleagues to start reading blogs or start writing their own.

I have connected with educators both near and far to develop my PLCs.

I have been inspired.

I have been surprised.

I have made the time to incorporate this into my life.  I don't know if I will be able to dive into all the possibilities in the Twitterverse as much as I might like, but it has been worth it and I will continue writing.  I will continue to share with colleagues at my school and beyond and I will continue to evolve.  I want my work to inspire the uncommon.  I want to fuel collaborative endeavors. I want to continue to grow.  With the Ed Blog A Day, I will.

Thanks to Chris for this great gift and to my fellow bloggers for all the words you spill out each day.