Presenting at YRDSB's Edtech Spring

Today I presented to a total of 3 people for the second iteration of "To Boldly Blog where No Blog has Gone Before".  It was quite the different experience compared to my first time I presented for my 2016 QUEST conference with 60+ people from all over the world.

That time I didn't have my slides organized, I was trying to use Pear Deck for the first time, and I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say.  Needless to say, it wasn't very good.

Today, I distilled the presentation down to some key concepts producing an overall better organization. I allowed for some genuine conversation and discussion among the audience (easy to do with 3 people)- which actually allowed me to learn quite a bit.  

I had a senior kindergarten teacher, an intermediate French teacher who is part of the ETFO executive, and a person from the Director's office.  The vastly different perspective on education allowed me learn so much outside of my secondary school niche and it was an incredible exchange of information (at least for me).

As for blogging, the needs of the senior kindergarten teacher were unique and I was able to help her out with the newsletters that will connect with parents directly instead of relying on 3-4 year olds who lose those pieces of paper between the end of school, daycare, and home.  Communicating with the parents who want the constant updates that they used to receive from daycare was another purpose of the blog that I was able to help her with.

                                          Caption:  Edtech 2016 first time presenters!

Overall, this was a great experience as I learned much through the informal conversations as well as trying to meet the needs of my 'students' as they tried to create their own blog that serves its own needs.

Today's PD - Michele Milan on Leadership and Mindfulness

The following are just snippets of Michele Milan's presentation intermingled with my own personal experiences.  I hope to just jot these down to reflect on my learning.  Well, here it goes!

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As an educator, I am the leader in the classroom.  Every mood, move, action I make will affect my students whether I mean to or not.

It's important to practice mindfulness to give us the conscious one second buffer time between our action and stimulus.  It will allow us to respond (not react) appropriately to the numerous stimuli in the class.  Being present in the moment will allow me to be fully in the classroom, and not bring out any of the frustrations I may have had with my car problems in the morning onto some poor student in the class.

The neuroplasticity of the brain emphasized the importance of being careful of what I actually practice and deliberately set a new default mode of 'being in the zone' like so many athletes can do during their performance.  Unlike what I currently have practiced - I have something similar to ADHD - I have an attention deficit trait which mimics much of ADHD's effects but the source is different.  My attention deficit is caused by my HABITS.  I have PRACTICED "multi-tasking" and not "single-tasking".  This is why I have over 20 tabs open at the same time in my browser.  Excuse my while I close these tabs.

Michele Milan mentioned how Dan Harris, who believes that mindfulness should be on the same level of importance as brushing ones teeth, exercising, and eating healthily.

Attention - choose your focus, and focus on what you choose.  Mindfulness is attending to attention.  It's the meta attention.

Integrate micro practices of mindfulness into your workday - lookup Maria Gonzales if you have time.  The one we practiced in her session today was taking two minutes to just breath and focusing your mind on nothing else bu breathing.

Talked to Keystone and she illuminated another thing to take away:  if you're not living in the present moment, then you're either worrying about the future (what if this..or what if that?) or ruminating on the past (if this didn't happen...or if that didn't...etc)  We have 50% attention span and if the other 50% is spent on worry or rumination, then this wandering mind is the cause of a lot of unhappiness.

EDIT:  Speaking of being mindful, I was busy preparing my facilitation session on MBTI breakout session in the afternoon that I wasn't really paying full attention to Michele's presentation; in the end, however, the MBTI portion of the day has been moved to another day.  Mind full vs mindful.  I paid the price and didn't get to extract her presentation in its entirety.  Good thing I read about this stuff on my own time.

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"How smart are teachers" vs "How do my teachers learn?"  Are we modelling this process of learning properly? 

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And, now time to plan out the numeracy course, prepare for a new unit for 9s, make their test and start working on exams.  I have to talk to numerous teachers about a few other students - their guidance counsellor and their student services (formerly known as special education)  December is good times.  Good, busy, times.