Lurking?

Every time I hear lurk it reminds me of Lurch from the Addam's Family TV show (some of you are too young to remember anything but the more recent movie version). This tall, menacing, deep-voiced butler was always there - but hardly ever contributing (except for some fine harpsichord playing).

There are now many teachers who are members of this blog site, yet most are playing the Lurch role! You always have permission to lurk, but we need to interact too! So, I'm going to get things rolling with a question, and I hope you will decide to contribute a thought, idea or resource to keep the conversation going. All you have to do is click the "comment" link at the bottom-right area below this post. Here we go....

What would you identify as one of your strongest "professional learning moments"? This may have happened in-school, or out-of-school. Please take a moment and write a short comment to share your story.

One moment that comes to mind for me was reading the metaphor of the digital immigrant and digital native set forth by author Marc Prensky. It helped me realize how wide the gap between school and life has become for our students, and heightened my sense of urgency to bridge this gap.

Raising the Quality

After our Raising the Quality Workshop today, I realize that my students have only just begun. My class is also struggling with building stamina in writing workshop like Jill mentioned.
It was brought up today at our workshop that it would be nice to share our favorite mentor text for teaching writing. A new book that I just bought this summer is called Mr. George Baker by Amy Hest . I have used it for many writing lessons (focus, so what?, content, descriptions, and style) so far this year. It is a great book!