Thursday, January 8, 2015

What's Your Word?

It’s 2015 and time to rejuvenate attitudes, outlooks, and energies.  We have written posts in the past about taking care of yourself as an educator or tips and tricks for staying relevant in the new year.  We kicked off this year by showcasing a video by Jon Gordon (@JonGordon11) as part of a recent training with our iPad Academy members.  The concept involves deciphering your personal obstacles and dreams, then settling on one word that will help you move forward.  

It is difficult to live up to a list of goals throughout the year, but our hope is that one word will help teachers reach their goals within their classrooms.  New Year’s resolutions are made and often times broken within a few months. According to CBS News, research shows that 88% of Americans fail to follow through with their goals because they take on too much. So why not try a one word focus for the year? Instead of making things so complex, keep it simple says Dan Britton and Jimmy Page, Authors of “One Word That Will Change Your Life.”

Recently, at our iPad Academy collaboration, we had our teachers ponder their word, share it, and then write their one word on a clothespin.  They clipped their pins on the wire frame, which created a wreath similar to the one we used earlier in the year.  The words included anything from inspired to collaborate, to overcome, trust, believe, and innovate.  Forty three words as unique as the 43 educators in the room.  



We plan on using the wreath throughout the year as a reminder to our group of their words.   It will be fun to reflect throughout the year to see if our words are still the focus of what we do. Jenny’s word is faith, Ann’s is together, and Jeanette’s is balance.

These words are meant to be shared!  Next month, we will be following up with our teachers on a creative project using the words. We hope to create an alphabet book of one words, make creative projects in Canva, blog about the words, and send one word happy-grams to our teachers. We will also be sharing the words with the world via Twitter.  We have posted our words boldly where they can be seen every day as a reminder of the one word that will transcend all we do this year.  

As John F. Kennedy stated, “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

What’s your word?  If you have one, please share it and leave us a comment.  We love hearing from you!

Written by, Ann Feldmann, Jeanette Carlson & Jenny Krzystowczyk
@annfeldmann1, @mrsjcarlson,  & @jennykbps

Shout out to Laura Kroll (@mandery) for sharing the CBS clip and one word inspiration.  

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