#sol14 #celebratelu March 15 Smiling During a Superintendent's Conference Day?

“Give me a fish and I eat for a day.  Teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.” ~ Chinese Proverb

As I watched teachers busily engaged in building curriculum maps yesterday, images of Superintendents' Conference Days - old school style - flooded my mind!  

• If you've been to a meeting where someone drones endlessly about something distantly connected to you life, but on very little day-to-day practical value to you, you know what I mean. 
• If you've ever been to a conference where someone talked, and talked, and talked, and talked....you know what I mean!
• If you've ever been at a meeting and spent time (or watched your friends, neighbors, colleagues) emailing, texting, Tweeting, Facebooking, Pinning, writing notes, correcting papers....or doodling, you know what I mean! 

The dread of those days, without kids smiling faces, when teachers who are usually on the prowl all day long are confined to a chair or a table for hours, was one of the few things teachers, on every level, agreed on - in the old school days!

Yet, yesterday, we had "one of those days" that really wasn't so bad; in fact, most considered it a good and productive day!   We used internet-based software and peer-based shared learning to organize our curriculum maps. We were busy, all of us, thinking about our teaching and students' learning, while learning to fish in a brand-new ocean!  

• Our maps turned out to be beautiful (see the example below).
• We will be able to find "fish" more readily, now that we have cleaned up and organized the "oceans" of papers and files that each of us had!  
• Our fishing for ideas and activities will be easier thanks to technology! 

I'm confident "those" who wrote that ol' Chinese Proverb were smiling at our maps!