Why blog? It's about pushing yourself

Last week I was fortunate to participate in a site visit to the 1:1 Learning Initiative at Montclair Kimberly Academy. It was one of those professional development days that just sets your head spinning. My hat is off to Bill Stites, Reshan Richards, Erica Budd, and all the others responsible for their hugely thoughtful program. Here are my notes.

A student laptop leadership team. A driver's manual and driver's test for earning admin rights on school-issued machines. An insistance on a maintaining a genuine technology environment in which students have to be responsible, and are allowed to make mistakes. A Global Citizenship course combining global issues, ethics, and information literacy. Evernote integration. And so much more. I was pretty bowled over.

Where does such thoughtfulness come from? Well I can't help but think it has something to do with the amount of sharing and reflection that teachers and administrators at MKA engage in right out in the open. Long before I ever stepped foot on their campus, I knew tons about what they were up to. I'd followed Bill Stites on Twitter and checked in on his blog for a couple years. I'd read Steven J. Valentine's "The Professionalization of Independence" and David Flocco's "Deeper Learning, Reduced Stress," in Independent School Magazine. I'd experimented with Reshan Richards's Explain Everything app.

It can't be a coincidence that all this sharing is coming from one school: MKA's faculty culture clearly encourages it. Reflecting himself on hosting the site visit, Bill said it the best: "Success is about Sharing." I'd add only that success is about deliberate reflection: about forcing oneself to pause and look backward to decide how best to move forward.

So as this blog's title suggests, I'm not here to pretend to be an expert. I'm going to share to push myself, to push my colleagues, and to push my school. Maybe I'll push some of you, like the folks at MKA have pushed me.