Balancing New Ideas

By Kim Miklusak

This week we had a series of pull-out meeting times in our school and district as noted in the various blog posts and tweets: Honors/AP English Drive Down, Lead Learners, District Instructional Technology, AP junior teachers, etc..  It is incredible that our district supports professional development and teacher collaboration in so many ways.

One of the things that always gets to me after these meetings and something I hear from my co-workers, however, is how we come across a million new ideas that we want to try out RIGHT NOW.  Or, we look back to the previous school year and think, Why didn't I do that!  It's inspiring and energizing to think this way, but it can also be tiring--especially in the middle of the year--so I write down notes and lists of things to work on over the summer. 

Sometimes I think we overwhelm ourselves with trying new things whether that be an instructional strategy or a new technology piece.  We have to remind ourselves and accept that it's OK to take things one step at a time, to try things out one at a time, to learn things as we go, or even to let someone else try things out and let us know how it goes, so we can maybe incorporate or adapt them into our curriculum later.  We don't have to try every new thing all the time.  We can thoughtfully take it as we go, always with the goal in mind of enhancing our own professional development and instructional strategies to meet the needs of our students.