Sweet!
Anyway, the summer 2012 semester for the 2012-13 SECMAC program is over. I'm still in a bit of shock over that since it still feels like June 18 was yesterday. I don't remember the last time I worked as hard as I did this summer (I lied. I do. It was 2008. The first summer I was working in management at in my former career and was at field school until the morning before an event started). It's tested me at time, but so far, I've passed the test. And it's going to take a lot to tell me I didn't pass. I had (past tense, it's gone from me) the bad habit of quitting when things hard in the past. I only felt like quitting once during the summer and it wasn't because of the program. That's big stuff.
If I was to reflect about the entire summer, I'd be reflecting all day. So I'll reflect on Friday's class instead. We listened to a panel of 5 past MACers talk about the experiences they've had in teaching and the role technology has played in their classrooms. It was enjoyable to hear MACers talk about their lives post program and even more enjoyable to know that they have jobs and have become the type of teacher I want to be. It was really interesting to hear different perspectives and see the reality of what technology in the classroom is. It takes on so many different roles. Two comments resonated with me, one from 2012 graduate of the program and the other from a teacher with a few years of teaching experience under her belt. Tom, who graduated this past spring, made a comment that opened my eyes up: he said you have to be ready to teach students how to actually use technology to their advantage. We assume that young people have some innate knowledge on all things associated to technology and that it just comes to them without issue. But that's not the case. We have to teach our students how to use technology if we want them to be successful with it. We have to do more then just show them a tool. We have to actually show them how to use it.
The other comment came from Stephanie, a MACer with a few years of teaching experience under her belt. She made the comment that you can have all the technology in the world available to you, but none of that matters unless you have the means of implementing it. She teaches at a school very close to the high school I attended. I suddenly viewed things in a totally different light when she mentioned she was the entire Spanish department at her school and that they felt like that one kid that just doesn't have what it takes to join the club. They have the technology, but no means of getting it used because of various circumstances in her school and district.
When I was in high school, I didn't see it that way. My mother is a teacher and I knew things could be rough, but it just never dawned on me about how things really were. And are. I want the happy, pretty lenses of schools that use a ton of technology and support that use to stay on. But I know that's not reality. I know that's not the school I'm going into or the district I'll be in. But I know I have a certain number of tools in my toolbox that I can work with and whatever I'm going to do is going to be done with those tools.
If I've learned anything over the past 6 or 7 weeks, I've learned that I can do this and when that when it get hard, I'm not doing this alone. I have 47 other people around me going through the same things. And when things did get bad for me, everyone around held me up and let me know that I wasn't alone, no matter what happened. Sometimes you just need to know that it'll be okay. And it has been.
But for now? I'm free. My parents just told me that if our flight gets canceled we do the second best thing behind Italy and go to Charleston. I'm not sure how South Carolina ranks second to Italy, but's a break and I need a break.
But we're free.
