Charlotte, North Carolina
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Well, this probably won't be a very exciting entry. I'm currently sitting in the airport at Charlotte, North Carolina, waiting to get on the plane to Vienna, Austria. Right now, I'm totally and completely exhausted. I've spent the last few days at a conference in St. Charles, Missouri on Professional Learning Communities. For those of you not in the education world, this is basically a schoolwide initiative to facilitate collaboration and focus the efforts of the entire staff on student learning and achievement. It's really cool stuff. My school, Rock Bridge High, has been doing PLC work for several years and I was lucky enough to be sent to this conference to bring back some new ideas. All of the speakers were fantastic. One presenter, Rick Dufour, was particularly inspirational and has really made me think about a lot. We're quite student focused at RBHS, but it's exciting to find new ideas and new ways to be even better. It's a shame that I had to turn right around and leave the conference for this trip because I'm still trying to process so much, but I have to refocus all of my attention to leading this group well
. Crazy as it sounds right now, I kinda wish we started school again next week so that we could put some of this stuff into action. Oh well! C'est la vie!
So, here I am with a group of 40 participants, heading off on a 12 day tour of Austria, Germany, and Switzerland. So far, so good. No major blips yet. The travel day is always the hardest with these tours. Airports and airlines seem like magnets for problems and delays. So far, our blips have been minor. Everyone in my group has been really positive and cooperative, despite a 7 hour layover here in the the wonderful city of Charlotte. Well in the airport anyway! I'm really looking forward to a nice long nap on the flight over to Vienna. We land a about 10:30 tomorrow morning and then we're off to a full day of activities. I'm really looking forward to that. Waiting is the hardest part!
More from Vienna to come...
Comments
Can't wait to hear about the ideas from the conference in STL! Hope all is going well! Keep journaling! Today is the first day of summer school! I'm not going to say "wish you were here" because I wish I was there!
Debbie