The single best thing

I've been inundated by thoughts of the last day of school. Can't wait for it to get here. We're all tired of the dreary weather we've been having (seems like months now and really is if you count all the snow we had before all of this rain). The kids are restless, and the teachers are exhausted. So much to do, so little time to do it in. Changes in budget have everyone on their seats waiting for the other shoe to fall. Busy lives outside of the workplace keep us hopping and wondering if this merry-go-round will ever stop so we can get off and rest.

Whew! We all get to this place in our profession. We're in a "rut" of some kind and can't seem to get out. These times can seem very cumbersome, but one of the best ways to get out of that rut is to think about the single best thing that has happened in your classroom this year.

So, I began to think about this. What is the single best thing that happened in my classroom this year?

So much has happened and changed in my classroom this year with the start of my attendance to our state educational technology conference. There I was introduced to Edmodo (www.edmodo.com), a social networking website for teachers and students. In a short amount of time I had my classes up and running on Edmodo and was trying different activities, but the best one I have going in there is the global classroom I've built with Ms. Chia, a teacher from Singapore.

We're both new to having a global classroom online in Edmodo, and we each had our own ideas of how this might work. Yet, we quickly agreed to allow the students to really make the decisions about what they want to learn from each other with some guided thinking added from the teachers at both ends. It was my Geography class that was participating in this project, but they are also my Language Arts students. In my LA class, I had started my poetry unit, and I was astounded how that caught fire and the wild fire took over the forest.

One student who has a passion for poetry decided to post a poem she'd written, in the global classroom. That sparked another student to post and another, and another, and another...you get the picture. Over the weekend, I hadn't been in the "classroom" much until later Sunday night. It was then I had discovered that one of Ms. Chia's students had compiled all of the poems that had been posted into an online "book". I was so touched. This was not a directed project by any means. It was one that was completely self-directed by the students. I must admit that I truly teared up with emotion. I don't think I could have given an assignment that would have touched both sides of the world in quite the way that the students did - all on their own.

No, the poetry is not perfect. In fact, there are many things as a Language Arts teacher pains me to see in "print", but I don't want to change a bit of it. To do so would mean that I've encroached on their space - the one thing they did all on their own without any assistance from the adults in their lives. Isn't that what it's all about? Getting students to take over the driver's seat of their education?

So, the single best thing that happened in my classroom was the global connection we made. Everything else I taught in that class pales in comparison to that activity. They couldn't have learned more if I had planned my life away for the best lessons in the world. They couldn't have gained any more knowledge if I had the highest of professional degrees. Self-discovery and building a connection across the globe will be a learning experience my students will carry with them for the rest of their lives. As a teacher, I could not ask for more; I was able to touch lives - forever.