In my opinion, I am often rich as Crœsus, not in money, but (though it doesn’t happen every day) rich, because I have found in my work something to which I can devote myself heart and soul, and which gives inspiration and significance to life.
Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to his brother Theo
This post is week 8 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.
The #8WeeksofSummer blogging challenge will stay with me. One takeaway is that I do better at blogging with a challenge. I’ve been blogging for close to ten years now, sometimes more regularly than others.
Here is a little history of my recent blogging:
In 2019, I made 16 posts. I began the year blogging, thanks to the #Blogging28 challenge last January through Edublogs, posting 5 times in January. In February through May, I made 3 more posts–no challenges. Then starting in June through today, I’ve made 8 posts in the #8WeeksofSummer challenge.
In 2018, I made 3 posts.
In 2017, I made 57 posts.
What was the difference between 2017 and 2018? Blogging challenges.
In 2017, I took two challenges, the #edublogsclub and #SliceofLife2017, which was each day in March and some Tuesdays after. In 2018, I took no challenges.
Writing heals and keeps me sane, so I need to take time to write. If blogging challenges are a way to encourage me to do that, I will take them.
Thank you so much to Penny Christensen for running this professional reflection challenge for this summer. Thanks also to Penny and other friends who came and commented on my blog–Sheri, Joy, and Scott.
Now. what will my next challenge be?
This post is week 6 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.
How am I planning to implement change next school year? My BHAG of improving English language acquisition and literacy at my school will be implemented throughout the school year, beginning even today:
I have no doubt that I and my colleagues will continue to implement the goals we have for the next school year right through next June. One step at a time. One student at a time.
This post is week 5 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.
This week Penny asks, “What goal is so powerful that you are compelled to move toward, yet respectful of its immensity?”
A big hairy audacious goal–the idea of BHAG, which was new to me today, is from Jim Collins’s book, Built to Last.
I do have big goals, which include:
Is my goal hairy and audacious?
From what I read about BHAG and the example of Boeing bringing commercial air travel into the jet age, my goals so far aren’t easily articulated as one BHAG. It is not a vision statement that will fit on a t-shirt, for instance.
Jim Collins explains another BHAG about getting to the moon in the 1960’s: “…the goal itself—the mountain to climb—was so easy to grasp, so compelling in its own right, that it could be said one hundred different ways, yet easily understood by everyone.”
My list may be the smaller steps to reach a bigger goal. As yet, it is not easily understood by everyone. Perhaps they are the many steps to get to a BHAG that I have yet to articulate.
I need to think about this, and perhaps read Built to Last.
This post is week 4 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.
What are optimal conditions in which to learn, for you, and for students? What a great question. I have spent the last decade really grappling with this question, but not taking time to really try to come up with the answers.
When I became what I called a “connected educator,” I learned so much. I became the chief learner in my classroom.
I passionately tried to teach my students to love learning and go for broke. Some of my thoughts from 2012:
Then I moved to a new country, where the culture is so different. The educational values are not what I was used to. Education here is what I describe as more traditional. Students and parents are more competitive and good grades and being on the honor roll are the pinnacle. I have weathered my share of storms as I try to navigate this new educational landscape.
Now, this week, for the #8WeeksofSummer challenge, I was asked the question about what are the optimal learning conditions for me and my students. Today, I have a more nuanced answer than the 2012 writing above.
I have never before stopped to articulate what I think about the colliding of my experiences in eastern and western schools. I’ll take a stab at it today, but really these are just some random thoughts: I’ll keep grappling!
I don’t think I have answered the question, but here are a few optimal conditions for learning worldwide:
I guess these are conditions that work for me and students.
This post is week 2 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators.
Who or what experiences have built you up into the educator you are today?
Joy Kirr’s post is the first I read during Week 2 of the challenge. Her story is familiar to me, as I’ve heard her tell it before. It also runs parallel to my own story, which began at about the same time.
I had been teaching since 1984–sometimes to a group of grade 2, grade 3, grade 7, grade 8, as a reading specialist with small groups of children, or for ten years as a stay-at-home mom with my two daughters. I loved all my students and schools. I always felt I was out-of-the-box and looking for how to be better.
However, in late 2010, something switched for me. Two colleagues came back from the Iowa Technology Education Conference and told me that teachers were using Twitter. OK, I thought. So what. They continued telling me about the connections they made, the Web 2.0 tools they discovered, the people that inspired them. They told me enough that I got interested and began exploring with them.
One of my first tweets happened while I sat at a Digital Literacy conference with Angela Maiers. I was at a table with Erin Olson, Stacy Brown, Brenda Ortmann, and Eileen Kinney listening to Angela’s challenging message. As you can see that uphill was a steep learning curve for me in more ways than one. I had to figure out the difference between # and @ on Twitter.
Angela is driving us up hill right now–wonderful! #digitalliteracyiv #iateachr #eolsonteacher #brendaortmann #angelamaiers ejkinneygohawks
— Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs) January 20, 2011
Angela Maiers was inspiring and challenging. Here is the post referred to in the tweet below. The people I met on Twitter enabled me to learn much more than I was used to learning. I began to read more books, read and write more blog posts, and I learned in a new and exciting way how to own my own learning, how to take responsibility for making a new way.
@AngelaMaiers Here is one of my many reflections. http://bit.ly/e7Znz2 "Why? To Create, Contribute, Curate and Connect" #digitalliteracyiv
— Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs) January 22, 2011
When I was searching for my first tweets, I also ran across this one I wrote in 2011 to Jee Young Kim. At that time, I was helping someone find resources to teach overseas. I myself had never been out of North America, but here I was saying, “Maybe someday I’ll be able to teach overseas!” What? I was sure I was making that up to be polite or make conversation. I had never had that thought before. But three years later I was doing just that!
@jeeyoung_kim Thank you for responding! Maybe someday I'll be able to teach overseas! This one was for @4thgrdteach Have a great week!
— Denise Krebs (@mrsdkrebs) April 26, 2011
I have now been teaching in Bahrain for six years. Thankfully, the things I learned from others and my commitment to innovation and improvement have not stopped.
I’m still connected with educators all over the world through Twitter. Even though education is much more traditional here, we are still growing professionally at each turn. Soon we will have the third annual EdCampBahrain. We have quarterly TeachMeets and hashtags to share our learning in the Middle East (#bahrainedu, #edchatMENA)
Then today I humbly received one of my Principal’s Innovation Awards at our school for engaging my students with things like blogging, Pearls of Wisdom, and Genius Hour.
Life is sweet, and there is such joy in this journey. I am very thankful for those who taught me what I know and for those who continually teach and challenge me.
This post is week 1 of 8 in the 8 Weeks of Summer Blog Challenge for educators. 
I have too much planned for this summer so I didn’t think I also had time to join Penny’s #8WeeksofSummer blogging challenge. However, I am going to give it a try.
My plans for this summer:
My professional learning will be happening in two countries and in 3 U.S. states. I have my laptop, my Kindle, and my phone ready for action.
I’m already a week late, so I’ll leave it at this.
We need to talk about white supremacy. Not in the “bad” people, but in our own white selves.
Let’s start today, not just in New Zealand. But in America or wherever we are.
White supremacy has been with us throughout our nation’s history.
Through slavery…leasing convicts…lynchings and other racial terrorism…Jim Crow…racial hierarchy…racial profiling…mass incarceration.
When I was a baby, Martin Luther King, Jr., pleaded with white moderates: “If you fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.”
Why didn’t I talk about America’s wealth being built with the blood and sweat of enslaved black people?
Why didn’t I talk about “good” people standing by and watching?
Why didn’t I talk about anti-blackness and white supremacy?
With my parents?
With my friends?
With my own children?
Though I didn’t articulate I was better than black people, I don’t remember ever articulating I wasn’t.
There is no such thing as being colorblind when it comes to racism.
My silence was complicity. White silence. White apathy. White centering. White privilege.
Complicity in white supremacy.
I am white, and I need to own it.
I am white, and through my acceptance of America’s original sin, I am a white supremacist.
Now, I have work to do.
Thanks, Rachel, Bryan, Layla, Josie, Clint, Jen, Mike, Jillian, Myisha, Dr. King, and all the others who are inspiring the dismantling of racism.*
*More I’m Learning From
17 Inspirational Quotes by Martin Luther King, Jr., About Speaking Up When it Matters
Justice in America Podcast with Josie Duffy Rice and Clint Smith
Speaking of Racism Podcast with Jen Kinney
Instagram: @Rachel.Cargle, @Laylafsaad, @morethanmiked, @ckyourprivilege, @degan_art