Blown Away!

First off--WOW! It's only been a little more than one week?! I'm feeling the rush of ideas, information, theories, and experiences as they fly at, swirl around, and go through me...and I love it.

Teacher friends of mine warned that this program might lead to credentials, but that the "real" learning would only come once I'm "on the outside," in my own classroom. I had no basis for disagreement before I started, I just gave the affirmative nod. But I held an unspoken belief that there must be a huge amount of learning in store for me here--and, thankfully, I was right. But it hasn't been what I had expected, the type of learning I was used to in high school or undergrad studies.

I am a person trained in earlier schooling to take in, memorize, and regurgitate information, so the biggest challenge for me has been to develop the skills of self-reflection, considered thought, analysis, criticism, and synthesis of and engagement in our material (hmmm, where do these fit on the MI list?!) that the constructivist approach supported by Zalika and all of our teaching staff demand of us. And learning on these levels has absolutely changed me already. I'm excited; I want to dig deeper; every book, every article mentioned or on a list I want to check out (you know, sometime when we have all that free time!)
It's probably also partially a natural tendency for newbies when a whole new world is opened up to them; like a nine year old walking through the gates of Disneyland for the first time, I want to see and do everything!

Taking a look at ourselves as learners, and having the opportunity to change ourselves through that process, to transmit those changes and that learning to our futures as educators...well, it blows me away!