I was at the always-amazing ULearn conference in Christchurch last year and got asked to do a EdTalk. These short video clips are done by the good folk at Core Education, where they essentially just sit you in front of a video camera and let you rabbit on about education and your own educational perspectives for a few minutes. My buddy Jane Nicholls was working the camera and she kept telling me to just talk about whatever I wanted to talk about. When she sat me down and said “go” I still had absolutely no idea what to say. I just did a brain dump and quite literally blurted out some of the stuff I was thinking about at the time.
Beautiful Growth
I was pottering about in the garden tonight and thought about a little story that I wanted to share.
If you teach long enough you eventually collect a whole lot of really lovely stories about the kids you teach. Every teacher can probably tell you about those lovely moments where a student has said or done something that makes everything worthwhile. A little note at the end of the year, a quiet word about how you’ve made a difference to them, or just doing something that reminds you of why you became a teacher.
Quite a few years ago I worked in a catholic boys school in Sydney where I was the head of IT. I happened to have my own office (in the same room as the servers of course) but I tried to make it a bit homely by bringing in a few plants to brighten it up. Not being the greenest of thumbs, I killed most of them. I’d replace them, but then kill the replacements as well. As a gardener, I really don’t have the knack of it.
Like many teachers, I had a group of kids who liked to hang around me. Because of my role as the geeky IT guy, the kids that liked to hang around always seemed to be the slightly geeky, slightly eccentric kids that have lots of personality, and I really enjoyed their company. Many of them would just come to my office at lunchtimes and hang out. One of them, a boy named Patrick, often remarked on my appallingly bad gardening skills and noted how I seemed to kill every plant I had. I had to agree and we had a good laugh about it.
One day, Pat came to my office and presented me with an unexpected gift. It was a small plastic punnet of baby cactus plants, small enough to fit in my hand. He jokingly told me that he wanted to give me a cactus because they require almost no attention and they were probably the only thing I wouldn’t kill. We had a laugh about it and it sat on my desk in pride of place, right next to my computer monitor.
Well, time marches on, and Pat eventually graduated and left the school. I eventually left the school too and moved on to other jobs, other schools. I took my cactus with me though, and put it in the garden at home where it actually started to flourish and do ok.
That was many years ago. Here I am, 10 years, 4 schools, 3 houses and 1 divorce later, and I still have my little “Pat Cactus”. Except it’s not so little anymore. It’s grown. Like we all do. I’ve grown. I’m sure Pat’s grown. The “little cactus” has grown and split and been repotted many times now. It now fills several large pots and a few small ones. It gets stronger and greener and every time I look at it I think about how special it was to be given something like that by a student and how special it is that it still grows stonger every day. I hope that’s symbolic of many things.
In what I think is a rather nice twist to the story, I discovered recently that Pat lives in the same area as me, in fact only a few streets away. So, a little while ago, I took some of the smaller offshoots of the now-large cactus, planted them in a small pot and took them down to Pat’s house as a gift for him, along with a note that said “I told you I wouldn’t kill it!”. It was my way of closing the loop, and, symbolically at least, keeping that wonderful circle of life going.
The story means a lot to me, because as teachers we start lots of ripples that we might never get to see build to waves and break on distant shores. As the cactus continues to flourish, I think about the hundreds of kids I’ve had the great joy to teach over the years and hope that they are flourishing just as well. Even if I’ve only ever had one student give me the gift of a plant that has grown and flourished, I’d like to think that the many students I’ve taught over the years have all given me the gift of knowing they’ve grown and flourished.
Thanks kids.
To be an ADE
I’ve always aspired to be an Apple Distinguished Educator, but I’ve never actually done anything about applying for it. As far as my own personal computer use goes, anyone who knows me knows that I am most definitely a Mac guy, but I assumed that I wouldn’t be able to apply to be an ADE because most of the schools I’ve worked in have been primarily Windows schools. As they say, one should never assume.
While it’s true that many – probably most – ADEs work exclusively in Apple schools, apparently it’s not always the case. While chatting with someone from Apple a while ago I mentioned this, and they replied that the ADE program is aimed at recognising teachers, and does not necessarily focus on the type of computers used in the school that teacher works at.
To become an ADE you obviously need to be active in certain ways that help spread the message about technology and it’s value for education. You need to be passionate about the ways that digital technology (and pretty obviously, Apple digital technology in particular) can make students more engaged and creative. You need to demonstrate some degree of innovative practice and a reasonable level of experience in the classroom. I hope I can do all these things. And you need to fill in the appropriate forms. I’m pretty sure I can do that part.
Oh, and you also need to make a short 2 minute video that gives a bit of an insight into who you are and what you do and what you might bring to the party. Apparently the video is pretty important. I gave it my best shot.
Anyway, I finally got my ADE application in for this next intake of teachers (a few days before the deadline too! Woohoo!) so my fingers are crossed. If you’re interested, here’s the video.
http://vimeo.com/18546117