Too much in my head

I have been holding off making a post because I didn't want to interfere with my contest.  Now I have so much in my head one post cannot hold it all.  Let me give a brief overview of a few things and then focus on what happened today.


Edscape
Went to Edscape on Saturday hosted Eric Sheninger at New Milford HS.  Absolutely amazing experience sitting with so many passionate, like-minded educators who are looking to find new tools to help their students grow.  While some of the sessions I could have run, I got so many good ideas from Adam Bellow and Lyn Hilt, both of whom I could listen to all day and not get bored.  It really inspired me to get my butt in gear in planning TeachMeet 2012.

TeachMeet 2012
Was able to connect with several people concerning the planning for TeachMeet.  Many things have stalled because we just can't find a venue.  Mostly this is because people don't respond to my emails.  Not sure why this is happening, but wish I could just find a place to get the rest of the planning started.  I have possible connections with Rutgers, Piscataway HS and Rutgers Prep so maybe one of them will actually get booked.

Meeting with the Principal
The principal who hired me left the school under mysterious circumstances and in a whirlwind of controversy. My guess is he said the wrong thing to the wrong person and they decided to find a new school leader.  We actually are still working under an interim principal who very well could end up back in his assistant role in a couple of weeks.  Anyway, I like to know the person who is leading me so on a whim I emailed him to see if he would meet with me to talk about his vision for the school.  Up until today, I haven't spoken to him for more than a few minutes so I wasn't sure how this was going to go.

My original plan was to mostly keep my mouth shut and let him talk, but that died out about 2 minutes into the meeting.  We started talking about getting everyone to create a class webpage using Google Sites (we will be going to Google Apps starting in the fall) and the conversation spiraled into more of the ideas of how to make the school great.  We started planning a Magnet program for the school, spun the professional development plans to work better with the union, and potentially started a new committee to integrate more technology into the classroom as well as to showcase the innovative ideas already in practice.  We use PLCs in the school.  Well, that's not completely accurate.  A few years ago they used PLCs, but with the constantly changing administrative staff, everything that was created has gone by the waste side.  Hopefully we will be able rebuild some of what was lost.

To be honest, my meeting was a little selfish.  I have a lot of ideas of how to change education bouncing in my head and, since I returned to the classroom, I haven't had the chance to test many of them out.  It was so fantastic to get the chance to talk out my ideas and have someone receptive to what I had to say.  The principal wants to do anything he can to move the school forward, but I don't think he really knows what the best way is.

Maybe I need to get him on Twitter.