Celebrating Success

Success is hard to see in my job at the micro level.  I don't know if it is because I am split between two schools or that I don't spend a lot of time watching individual teachers put into practice what I taught them.  The nature of my job has me working predominantly with those teachers who do not know what to do with a particular technology.  Today was different though.

I have been working with a team of teachers who are not very digitally skilled, but who are eager to learn and apply.  We have a software that most teachers are required to use on a monthly basis.  I started working with this particular team on this software at the beginning of last year.  Progress has come in fits and starts, but progress was being made.  Today I saw that come to fruition. 

One of those teachers asked me to help her with some tasks in this particular software.  Then she proceeded to do exactly what she needed to do without my help at all.  I was just there for her mental support.  It was knowing that she had support if she needed it, that freed her up to succeed.  A year and a half of work had finally shown results.

Kudos to that teacher for persevering and continuing to work with a software even though others in our division gave up long ago.         

As the amount of information grows, so does our need for eachother

We consume a lot of information in the course of our day.  More so now then at any other time in the history of man.  We need each other more than ever to help make sense of it.  

A recent theme that has come out of my small group is the idea that the Bible must be interpreted and understood as a group of believers and not as individuals.  I tend to agree with that sentiment because I gain a far deeper and nuanced understanding of stories and passages after hearing the perspective of others.  I think this same idea applies when exploring and trying to learn from the volumes of information that bombards us today. 

While watching West Wing the other night President Bartlet quoted Ephesians 5: 21, "Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." This presents the idea that we should be serving one another or putting the needs of others before our own.  Again, I think this is very important today because so much information is out there.  We need to find the areas of knowledge that we care about and are knowledgeable in and we need to share our insights in those areas with others who are willing to do the same.  As Seth Godin puts it, we need to find a tribe.     

Couple this with a comment posted by an acquaintance from William and Mary.  He was asking if their is evidence supporting the idea that education can enhance the ability of the human mind to process information.  I think the enhancement comes from learning together.  Yes you can learn on your own, but I don't think you do it as well as when you do it in a group. That to me is the true value of education in a public context.  We provide each other with experiences and ideas that we would not otherwise interact with.  By learning together we learn more.   

If we take the idea of approaching learning in groups, connect that with the idea of serving one another found in Ephesians, and then share that learning with each other publicly in our areas of expertise we make all of us better.  

That is why I appreciate it when friends share items on their Google reader feeds, post articles on Facebook, and blog about their experiences.  I plan to keep doing the same.  Will you join me?