CFF Boot Camp 2011

The Future is Now...this was the Star Trek-inspired theme of the 2011 Classrooms for the Future/21st Century Teaching and Learning Boot Camp. As the one of the largest and most tranformative grant programs in the recent history of Pennsylvania Department of Education comes to an end, the focus was on sustainability. How do coaches and mentors maintain the momentum achieved in the face of shrinking budgets and lack of visionary leadership?
http://futureisnow.wikispaces.com

Once again, coaches were grouped with other coaches from across our vast state. We were charged with a group and individual mission rooted in project-based learning. Our task was to develop a sustainability plan that focused on the following areas:

• support system for coaches
• barriers and solutions
• collaboration system
• teacher resources
• global vision

Through series of mini-missions or group exploration we brainstormed next steps, polled our groups on support systems, and studied model lessons. Our final presentation came in the form of a wiki that demonstrated our plan with Google groups, YouTube videos, glogs, web links, and text. -http://cffsustainability.wikispaces.com. In the next couple of days I will submit my individual mission to my PDE TIM (mentor) at my IU.

Although I valued the opportunity to meet, collaborate, and share with coaches from across the state, I felt that much of the boot camp experience was redundant and awkward for me. Now, please don't misunderstand my feelings but I realized that I'm in a fortunate position. This is because my district made a commitment to my role as a technology integrator regardless of the grant. We also have a new superintendent who wants to build upon the efforts of the technology department and the CFF grant at that high school by establishing a full-fledged professional development academy. I am a standing member of that committee. Even during the conference I was handling the next stage of the implementation of a Moodle pilot after the school board approved the funding the night I was travelling to Hershey.

Exciting for me, but for many coaches the struggle is to go full-time or to not be cut at all. It was difficult to contain the excitement of what was happening for me and my school district. Although I empathized and fully-supported the other coaches in my group and in the room at=large, my story was different. I even then I found myself feeling angered and depressed by the stories of frustation and anxiety that were shared (not that I haven't felt this way myself). I did not expect to feel that way.

In the end it was still a good experience to be among my own when I so often feel like I live on my on little island in my school district.