Monday 22 December 2014

A Weird Challenge for Myself (Others Are Welcome!)

Dear sweet blog,

  I'm sorry I've neglected you for so long. It's been a busy an challenging couple of months (more on that another time, perhaps).

  I have some plans to get you back up and running and to get me back up and running as a blogger.

  First things first, clearly a blog challenge kept me on track. I will be putting together a blog challenge of my own sometime in the new year.

  In the meantime, I'm enjoying #WeirdEd chats, hosted by Doug Robertson, the author of "He's the Weird Teacher". I love the online community he's built and the opportunities to be weird, creative and innovative during his chats.

  I've started reading "He's the Weird Teacher" and am pretty sure that Doug actually lives inside my head. There are so many things he writes that match my own brain perfectly. However, hard as I try, I can't have a conversation with him (or anyone) inside my head.

  In a twitter conversation last night, several of Doug's Weird disciples started talking about putting together a book club. As always, I had to get things rolling and started a Google Doc for people to sign up and collaborate. Melissa Eddington started a Voxer group and I've started Vox-ing (is that a verb?) with her about how to make the Book Club work.

  Remember how I started this letter to you, dear blog, by saying that I needed a new challenge? I've come up with a simple one. Doug's book consists of 35 chapters. As you may know, most months have about 30 or 31 days, those numbers are similar, though not identical. If I were to blog every day for a month, using each chapter as a prompt, I'd blog my way through the book in just over a month. So as not to set myself up for too much disappointment in myself, I will be OK if I blog every two days or so and finish my self imposed Weird Challenge by the end of February.

  #ComCon, #WeirdEd, #L2L4L, feel free to join me in this challenge. Here's the inspiration for what I'll be blogging about:

1. Rockstar
2. Personal Responsibility
3. Teaching is Performance
4. Polar Express
5. Distractions
6.  Student Teachers
7. Philosophy on Discipline
8.  When the Students Are Hard, You’re Doing Your Job
9. Dressing Up
10.  How You Talk When You Talk About Your Students
11. The Trunchbull and *Deep Breath* Parents
12. Bodily Functions
13. Indoor Recess is Evil
14. The “E” Word
15. Bullying
16. Letters to Prison
17. Spelling Tests
18. My First Staff Meeting
19. What I Want Out of an Administrator
20. Learn from Fear/Inspire With Love
21. Getting a Tie and Losing My Music
22. Strange Things I Do in My Classroom (OR Things I Think I Might Have Stolen)
23. Special Guests
24. Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches
25. Tetherball
26.  Sympathy for the Weird Kid
27. Messing with Kindergarteners
28. Suck It!
29. There Are No Rules and Everyone Is Faking It
30. Reading Above Their Level
31. Substitutes
32. Dinosaurs and Fields of Study
33. Safe Schools
34. The System
35. Hello, Goodbye and Thank You
See you soon (I promise!),
Shauna