Final Reflection Letter

          SI is over. This experience has been an overpowering explosion of knowledge for who I am as a writer and teacher. When I first came to SI I felt like the geek at the cool kids party. Being a new teacher, I didn’t know what I brought to the group. It was as if everyone was thinking, who let her in here? That is the reaction I get at team planning every week. Because I’m a new teacher, I have nothing to offer. But these doubts and fears did not take long to diminish because I realized what this space is. It isn’t a competition for who had the best demo, blog entries or even breakfast food. It is a space for possibility: my SI experience in three words.

Possibility as a writer. I’ve always written. Maybe it was a short story idea scratched on a post-it note or a treasured poem hung on the wall. Lately though, I’ve fallen away from it. Maybe I’ve gotten too caught up in the everyday hustle of life and I have forgotten my long lost friend. SI has renewed my love of writing. To sit, in a space, with no motive but to write for me. I’m not writing a research paper, or grocery list, or lesson plan. I am taking the time to get my thoughts on an issue I value on paper. It is so freeing. I must have forgotten that feeling the past few years. Yet it is very present now. The past two weeks I’ve been dreaming of stories. Stories that need to be told even if no one but me ever reads them. This desire to write for my own purpose is what writing is made of.

Possibility as a teacher. In two short weeks I have taken away more knowledge about teaching, practical and theoretical, than my entire undergraduate experience. Not to discredit my university in any way, but there are some things that cannot be taught in a traditional classroom of pre-service teachers. In this classroom it is not about just the learning offered by administrators, it is the learning of other teachers. It is their willingness to share ideas and not be afraid to express their doubts. The idea of, who is an expert, came up this week. Although we all strive for this in our profession, none of us are. If we are experts then there is nothing else to learn. Yet we have proven that not to be the case these past two weeks.

What I will take away from SI is the new knowledge that teaching isn’t a competition of the best but a collaboration of smart professionals.  In the school year to come I will use much that I’ve learned these past two weeks. There is so much to take away: from the demos on writing, to the web programs, to the ways of thinking about teaching and learning. There is nothing we did that I don’t value. Not only did it give me “stuff” to use, but the first clear model of what an exemplary classroom looks like. I hope to get there some day.