Action Plan

My plan of action in the fall is Master's work and lots of it. However, now that I've been through the demo and seen everyone else's, the little voice of responsibility in my head is telling me maybe NOW would be a good time to start putting lessons together. With all this experience to lean on now, I can put things together and bounce them off people, find the holes so I can fill them. It's very comforting to have that, a network that can tell me "Oh, yeah, I tried that and...".
As far as my own writing, I'm going to keep at it. The biggest difference now is the fact that I'm saving drafts for two reasons. First, I've discovered that I often fool myself into thinking new is definitely better, which is probably a bit of an overreaction to my previous falling in love with the first draft. The more important thing to me is having those drafts so that I can show students that I may be good at this, but it's work. I'm really allowing myself to be "wrong" in my writing now and I want students to understand that is part of the process.
The demo taught me to trust my instincts. I had experience that I wasn't sure was universal, but research supported me. I need to rely on this more but remain open to finding a new perspective.
As yet, I can't say I'm going to be collecting student samples, but I'm going to look for stuff that shows the students' development.
My experience here and the demos have really got me thinking about how important building a community is. I had a few moments in my demo where I leaned on the community here to keep things lighthearted and moving well. We support each other and I want my students to feel that in the classroom. To this end, I definitely see the community building techniques, like Dana, Rachel, and Casey's demos, making it into the classroom.
For obvious reasons, I'm going to be picking over the information on NWP's website that's related to the New Teacher Initiatives. I think Debbie would be great working on something like this. She shares her experience freely and she's always got a story from her classes to back up her reasoning.
I'm going to miss all of you.
Chris