What’s the deal with ants?

“It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?” -Henry David Thoreau

I love this question.  We are all professionally busy.  What are we professionally busy about? Are we busy about the right professional things?  Have we taken the time to look at our full professional plates?  What might be scraped off the plate into the trash because it’s not really that important?  Is it simply sitting on the plate because it’s been on the plate for a long time and we haven’t thought about dumping it?

“When we know better, we should do better.”  As professional educators, it is our responsibility to continue to grow and learn.  Just like we want our students to do.  When we learn about better ways to do educational, learning type things…we should do them.  To say ‘we don’t have time’ should be appalling to us.  We wouldn’t accept this from a doctor when working with one of our own children.  If the doctor hasn’t moved her/his professional learning ahead after graduating…and there are clearly better methods and treatments to treat our children, we would never buy, “I just don’t have the time.” We’d find another doctor.

Let’s check to see what we are so so busy about.

Thanks Henry!

Author: Jnelson

Jeff Nelson Fife School District Assistant Superintendent:Teaching-Learning-Innovation 39 years as an educator. 16 years teacher 3 years assistant principal 12 years principal 8 years Assistant Superintendent BA, Washington State University MAEd, Washington State University Previous member of AWSP Legislative Committee Previous member of UW Tacoma PEAB, Administrative Certification Established and maintained Fife’s first website for 7 years Present work includes establishing the first Teaching/Learning/Innovation department in the Fife School District. Examples of responsibilities include: teacher/administrator professional development, assessment, TPEP, curriculum/materials review, 24 credit requirement, technology levy leadership, teacher/administrator bargaining. Initiatives underway in Fife, as a result of new TLI Department: AVID, OER, Curriculum and Materials reviews, Student Perception Pilot with CSTP, Google Expedition Cofounder of Educational Internet Communications, LLC. Marketed and sold one of the first online grade checking programs in the US. Consulted with Seattle Educational Internet Company for 2 years. jnelson@fifeschools.com twitter.com/jeffnelsonTLI View all posts by Jnelson