All in a post...

So to celebrate my 500th post... I will write about my writing process...

On my way home from work I go through the photographs of the day... deleting the ones that are blurry, or are of the floor by accident, and quite often I see the story of the day... what we have been learning, what the children have experienced... sometimes what I have learned by the experience - as the children will always be my teachers too...

Usually the photo process takes me half my journey... the second half I sit and reflect... I have made the choice not to be connected to the internet on my phone... so that I am guaranteed reflection time everyday... either over my work or over my life... I have always been a big daydreamer, so I really value this time...

In the mornings I take a free paper which I browse... sometimes reading, but mostly just checking out what is going on... sometimes articles here have got me thinking and they have ended up being a collection of thoughts.

Posts have often been inspired by dialogues with others... with my colleagues at Filosofiska... and also worldwide colleagues in facebook and twitter... as the dialgue has got me into thinking, then it is often quite natural to continue that thinking in a post...

I love getting feedback on my blog and facebook page... because that really does inspire me in my choices of what sort of posts to write... but it always has to be something I feel passionate about... and since I feel quite passionate about most things ECE it is not hard to ignite my fire and get me thinking... and then writing...

me and my camera

I like to challenge thought... not to just to accept everything, but to question it, to pick it apart and to put it back together again... either as it was or as a new possibility... always with the openness to pick it apart and start again...

I also like to read other blogs and ECE articles to challenge my thinking... doing the Exploring Play MOOC (the mentors/professors/teachers are from Sheffield University, UK) has been interesting - and I am in its final weeks now, so I will really miss that extra thinking stimulus in mid November when it is over... (maybe time to look for another MOOC... or maybe time to really sit down and write that book I keep saying I am going to write...)

Without a shadow of a doubt this blog has helped me in my role as a teacher... because it has allowed me to see the children's play and learning and extra time, it has allowed me the time and space to get my thoughts down on paper... and they are my thoughts... I sit down and they just fall out of my head onto the screen (OK via the keyboard!!!)... on occasion I find I need to look for references to back up my thinking.
I also go back to old posts and read them and see the journey the children and I have made together... the bumps in the road, the wonderful free-wheeling down hill, the hard work of mountain climbing, and the gentle meambling together allowing us to see all and reflect...

Sometimes I add reflections, but not always, sometimes I wish I did that more... might be my new year resolution this year... maybe one a week is enough. After all reflection is such an essential part of this work I do with children...

Blogging has also let me play with technology more... playing with picmonkey has been a great as a creative outlet... and has also been great in documentation... but even there I have gone full circle and returned to powerpoint more to keep the presentation of the ideas simple... not to overload the children with too many images and ideas at one time... to respect their need to sort out their thinking too... if I need space and time to think then I must also allow time and space for others... and not fill it for them.

messing about with picmonkey - and yes that is me - or it was before I started messing with the image...

Of course there are many things that I cannot share on this blog - this is a place of collaboration and not of individual needs (although I do share about my son, but I have his permission to do that, as he too wants to be able to help others through his story, as he has been helped by reading and watching the stories of others with ADHD or children on the autism spectrum.). Some stories are too personal and they need my attention not in the blogging worl but in the real world only...
... but sticking with a blog that feel like its a collaboration feels right...
I share how the children learn together, how I learn together with them and my colleagues... I share my experiences when I collaborate with others around the world... something that I value enormously... this allows my perspective to stay wide open, to not start closing in like a tunnel so that I can only see the light at the end... but the whole valley of learning - with the possibility to climb mountains and discover more (and enabling me to see the learning from yet another perspective as I climb... the tunnel does not offer that at all)

me and Michael

I think I am always open to write about most things, I am not afraid to be wrong... but at the same time I prefer not to be... I am nerdy enough to go and research a little (and sometimes more) when I feel I do not know something - so my learning journey is very much on record here... and very often I will state that I am not sure of my thoughts, that I am playing with ideas, needing feedback to work out what it is that I think. Because sometimes you can only be sure of what you think yourself when you get to discover how others think...

sitting at the computer...

So I hope that my writings over the year offer inspiration... not only to try out new things but to try out new thinking... to question your own ideas, to question the traditions and practices so that you better understand them... not a blog that tells you what to do... but a blog that suports you in discovering your own meaningful journey....

and an owl pic... because the owl is so amazing