A few months ago, my friend, Kathleen, and I teamed up to create
The Classroom Cafe, a free website where we share ideas to take teaching and learning from worksheets to wonderful! It wasn't that we thought worksheets were terrible or that we thought that we were 'all that'; we actually wanted to challenge OuRSeLVes to grow professionally and find more engaging and creative ways to assess, reinforce, and deliver instruction. We thought that by establishing The Classroom Cafe together, we would be accountable not only to each other, but also to those who stopped by to read our blog:)
In June, Kathleen and I started also working together to plan and deliver professional development sessions for teachers at our school. (It is actually part of my normal job, but Kathleen is just as passionate as I am about PD and volunteered to help.) More accountability! The timing was perfect; our school had just made the switch to 4x4 block. We were all looking for activities for the new 90 minute periods. This gave us the perfect focus for this fall's monthly PD meetings and The Classroom Cafe's weekly video segments. I never would have guessed how much fun it would be to dream up topics for the sessions with Kathleen and the rest of our teacher friends. From black light to qr codes, we have touched on a bit of everything (complete with invitations, decorations, and costumes:). Through this process, we have stretched ourselves, moved beyond our comfort zone, and looked for inspiration from many of you!
While Kathleen and I had blogged, tweeted, and presented independently prior to working together, we have found that it is so much more rewarding when we collaborate. So, now what? It's road trip time... our LACUE conference proposal was accepted!!! In 5 short weeks, we are headed to our state's technology conference to host #AppyHour where we are serving up our iMenu in true, southern CafeGal style. I'm so excited! What could be better than friends AND technology all in one place???
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