Sunday, April 05, 2015

Resurrection Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, I posted to this blog on a regular basis. It was mostly a journal about my life in Japan and all the extraordinary people I met there. Then, after moving back to the US to attend graduate school at the School for International Training (SIT) in Brattleboro, VT, this blog started to lose some momentum, but posts continued to slowly trickle out. When I moved to San Francisco in 2008, the posts… just kinda… stopped.

Now, after many years of silence, I’m ready to resurrect this sucker with a new goal and focus. I want to use this online space to connect with other educators, music lovers, art aficionados, pranksters, and anyone else who takes the time to read whatever dribble I put here. 

I credit my interest in this resurgence to Will Richardson, an author and advocate for personal learning networks. A few years ago, I read his TED Book titled Why School?, which caused me to take a step back and examine the methodologies I was using with my students. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in 21st century education. More recently, I read his book titled Personal Learning Networks, which has really lit a fire in me to be more active online to make useful connections around my passions.

Hence, I plan to post some of my lesson plans and materials, in hopes of connecting and collaborating with other educators. There’s no sense in teaching in an isolated classroom while the bulk of human knowledge is accessible online. I also want to share some of my favorite musical discoveries. I’ve been an avid listener my entire life, and I’m sure someone out there has similar tuneful tastes. My day job affords me the opportunity to join university art classes in a variety of subjects, so I’d like to share some of the epiphanies I experience. I’m sure there are folks out there that know much more than me and can further my understanding. Finally, the internet is a crazy place, so I need a place to rant about my crazy Bay Area Burning Man friends and post pictures of my cat, right?


There’s really no telling where this blog will go. My fingers are crossed that I can build some sort of educational S.T.E.A.M. with it. If I can begin providing some valuable content, while making more connections, and having thoughtful conversations, with just a little bit of goofy fun, I’m sure things will be happily ever after.