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.
