How have connections with other professionals improved your practice? Today's entry is from Lauren Monahan, English Teacher at La Costa Canyon High School:
A few years ago I had the great pleasure of attending a week-long camp for teachers at MIT in Boston. While there, we heard some of the greatest minds in the world lecturing for eight hours a day (once we even got to tour their nanotechnology lab, or as I liked to call it, "the bat cave!!!!!!!"); each day I came away with more than ten pages of single-spaced notes on everything from string theory to plastics. For a nerd like me, I couldn't imagine a better way to spend my summer. I've also attended ISTE conferences, snuck into history lectures at schools I do not attend, taken a full-immersion Hebrew course in Jerusalem, and driven through the night to nab a front-row seat and handshake with the likes of Junot Diaz or Condoleezza Rice.
All of the following have significantly influenced my teaching in unexpected ways, as have the casual encounters I've had with teachers of other disciplines while we work together to battle the notoriously persnickety Xerox machines at LCCHS.
While at MIT I practiced writing rudimentary code with their new educational software and realized that the same skills required to write effective code were the ones required to write a solid essay (SPECIFICITY, clarity, transitions, etc.), and I learned a lot about what happens to the brain while my students are reading/doing abstract thinking. While learning Hebrew I was reminded how much my fears of doing poorly could literally block my ability to learn, and by working an a language so different than my own I was able to perceive linguistic elements of English I'd taken for granted and was then able to discuss them in a fresh way with my students. While Ed Machado metaphorically kicked the Xerox machine for me, Jobi Cooper and I were able to pinpoint areas where our students' analytical skills were limited. The list of "ways my teaching English has improved by studying other disciplines" goes on and on.
I do love my English department colleagues, and since Kaitlin Wood's post perfectly summed up what I was going to say on the synergy of LCC's English department's lunchtime chats I had to start thinking outside the box for what to write here. But I'm glad I was pushed outside my comfort zone on blogging because it forced me to remember how much better off I am as a teacher each time I'm pushed outside my comfort zone. So I guess that's my contribution to Blogtoberfest: sharing my love of reaching across the intellectual aisle.
And as a final thought, here's a link to a cool TED talk (Warning: if you don't already use them, TED, Coursera, MIT's Open Courseware, etc. are addictive) on how no one achieves greatness by rigidly sticking to the right-brain or the left-brain, but by using both sides of the brain.
