Less of a to-do list than a “food-for thought list” but last weekend was spent in the company of hundreds of motivated, enthusiastic tecahers – heaven! As always after a conference I come home with my head full of ideas, things to look up, and motivating memories.
While all this is still spinning through my brain, here are some thoughts:
From the delightful Jane Revell I learnt to call “tenses” “relaxes” and to avoid the word text, referring to story, article, letter instead. I loved her ideas on predicting the UNKEY words of a text, those that will NOT appear in a text, as well as the key words.
Jane mentioned Wendy Cope’s poem ‘the Orange’. I was given a book of her poetry many years ago and I love seeing echoes of my life in other people’s talks.
I also enjoyed hearing Nadine Stair’s poem ‘If I had my life to live over’. I don’t think I’d change much. On a similar theme the next day we were asked during Paul Dummet’s keynote speech “if you didn’t have to work again, what would you do?” and I truly believe my answer would be “go to work”, aren’t I lucky? (or sad?!)
Finally Jane reminded us of the 7 habits of highly effective people:
- Be Proactive
- Begin with the end
- Put first things first
- Think win/win
- Seek first to understand/listen, then to be understood/speak
- Synergize/Collaborate
- Sharpen your saw
Interestingly Paul Drummet’s address had the 8th habit as its title –Find(ing) your voice. Paul’s advice to producing a good TED speech sounds like good advice for life:
-be passionate
-be informed
-be yourself
Thanks to him I have a couple of TED talks to share:
Rita Pearson’s “Every Kid needs a champion” and Dan Barber’s “How I fell in love with a fish”.
His quote from James Comer, “ no significant learning takes place without a significant relationship” spokes volumes to me, and I’ve also been advised to watch the film “Precious”.
I particularly enjoyed Chrissi Florides’ workshops on the subject of creativity – this is my theme of the year, it’s following me (or am I following it?) and I was lucky enough to interview Chrissi for the upcoming ETAS journal special supplement –so watch this space.
I have finally decided I must learn German, all this gadding about Switzerland would be so much easier, although the magnificent views more than make up for the time it takes to get home.
Fab English ideas 