It has also been a long time between posts for me…I have been working really hard, I have a little boy who doesn’t sleep well and my back and neck have been very sore. Yesterday morning I woke up up at 430am with a troubled 3 yr old and I was thinking about how difficult my last couple of weeks have been. I was contemplating how much joy I get from reading the blogs and starting feeling guilty about not contributing – I have many blog posts planned & prepared but not uploaded.

 

So I lay there planning out a really honest post about how difficult things have been… contemplating the purpose of the blogs and how much information is too much. What I had mentally drafted was too much for this space.

I had already set my alarm early because I am determined to exercise even though I feel so broken. I dragged myself out of bed and set off.

I walked to Edithvale in the dark. I listened to the end of the This Podcast Will Kill You part 1 on antibiotics. I had many thoughts – I should go back and hide for the day, I should go and study medicine, I should go back and study microbiology, I am loving this episode – I hope the students listen…

I got to Edithvale – it was still too dark for someone as clumsy and into true crime as me to walk home along the beach. I sat at a beach hut and read through stuff on my phone trying to work out how to get my positivity back… Lucyanne had directed some pretty powerful positivity my way and her email shook me back into myself.

So I was inspired again… time to start generating some positive energy myself and not wallow or worry over my bad couple of weeks.

I have been working on trying to channel all of my BOH teaching into creating a learning community that brings all of us together at different times and in different ways. Part of my philosophy is course-long learning – and this is where the ePortfolio program fits in. It isn’t completely obvious yet – but all of the bits and pieces, the artefacts, of work that you do are all hopefully going to be brought together to really give you perspective on where you started and what your journey through the BOH was like. I haven’t got it all together yet but we are heading in the right direction.

On my way back home I listened to Gardner Campbell on the Tea for Teaching podcast. This was like listening to boy Clare, but with about 20 years more experience. He talks about how he gets his students blogging, how he gets them doing all sorts of different pieces of work outside the LMS so that they can take it with them… he goes further than me and the classes he teaches develop Wikipedia pages and all sorts of things. He also describes how he gets complaints and how not everyone understands, but eventually he gets them all along for the journey with him. I was so happy… I felt validated and like I was not the odd one out. I think that even as students you may get something out of hearing Gardner’s descriptions of alternatives ways of engaging with students – only if you are really bored though I guess lol…..

Gardner talks about the blogs he asks his students to write as being a story of their learning and I nearly cried… I thought about how that is what these blogs have become. No-one is really forcing you to write in this space, but you are all still writing. And whilst I haven’t been able to get you interacting on each other’s blogs yet what you are doing is describing the story of your learning. The reflection on your experiences during this time have been so insightful. I feel privileged to be the teacher that gets to read them all.

 

I could not have chosen a better episode of anything to get me motivated and happy again. I had almost the whole beach to myself as I wandered home. I totally redrafted my blog post in my head – you don’t need to hear all of my woes, that isn’t helpful.

So thank you all for your contributions here and for keeping me going too. Working at Melbourne Uni teaching perio and dental hygiene is my dream job… I am determined to continue to make things better – perhaps sometimes you need to have a few down days to really realise you are where you are meant to be. After all, sadness is helpful… but I prefer joy.