Day 84: Deb Lairson, Intervention Teacher

Front Porch Reflections

Hi everyone!  I am a teacher at Ridgewood Elementary.  I am friends with Mr. Higginbotham and he told me all about this blog last summer.   I was really excited about the opportunity to share new learning, so I told him that I would post on the blog.  Here it is!!!  :) 

            When I think about learning, I think about so many different things.  I learn something new almost every day.  Most of the time, learning feels great!  Sometimes though, learning is tough.  That’s when the learning happens the hard way…  When you learn something the hard way, it does not always feel so good. 

            I love to learn by watching things on YouTube!  I learned how to install a new light in my daughter’s bedroom.  When I was done, I was so excited!  I did it all by myself!  I was able to learn how to do something without a professional nearby.  My teacher was a man on a video.  I felt so accomplished, that I decided to give it another try. 

            The paint on my front porch is beginning to peel away from being there for a long time in all kinds of weather.  I got on youtube and looked up “How to repaint peeling trim on a house”.  Sure enough, there were many videos to watch.   I watched three and felt like I was ready.  I went to Home Depot to get the things I would need.  Then I prepared my things and got started.  I was using a tool to peel away the old paint and it was working just like the man on the video said it would…  until I went a little too far and left a gash in the woodwork.  :(  I was very sad.  I learned a very important lesson though.  

            I am still working on my project, but I am approaching it in a very different way.  I didn’t just learn how to take old, chipping paint off of the trim.  I learned that you have to do it slowly and carefully.  You can’t rush.  I may have learned it the hard way, but I still learned.  :) 

            Remember that when you are frustrated with something that you are trying to learn.  It might not always feel good, but when you learn it, it is worth all of the hard work. 

Deb Lairson is an Intervention Teacher at Ridgewood Elementary in Hilliard, Ohio.   

 

Day 83: Herb Higginbotham, Intervention Teacher (WE'RE BACK!)

It's relationships, not just technology, that make a difference.

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We are back and ready to continue sharing our stories of learning! I wanted to start by sharing something I learned over the summer.

In August, I was fortunate enough to host a session at the Ohio Innovative Learning Environments Conference .  I was eager to present on the topic of blogging in schools and sharing how Hilliard Horizon participated in the #learn365 project by blogging about what our community was learning each day.

Since the Ohio ILE Conference has the word “innovative” in its title, it made me think that technology was going to be a major theme for the conference.  That also made me think that people were going to be expecting me to talk a lot about how we used technology.  Blogging this school year did involve a lot of technology use in order to share our learning and I was ready to put the focus of the session on the technology and web-based apps we used.  

However, when I look back on the posts we did, the themes that were most common had nothing to do with technology.  Our learning community shared stories of relationships, collaboration, hopes, dreams, and reflections.  We did share a couple of posts about technology, but within those posts were ways we were using technology to connect with others in order to learn.

Learning about how we can utilize technology in our classrooms is important for us educators to do in order to strengthen our instruction. However, I believe that there needs to be a larger purpose that drives this learning.  

Last year, I learned that there is amazing power in connecting with others through technology and sharing what we are learning.  This affirmed my belief that it’s the relationships and the connections we make with other learners, not the technology, that really matters most.