Summertime

I love summer. As an administrator, I have a 12 month contract and work through the summer. And I absolutely love it. I spend the first part of each day reading through twitter, and all of the links and blog posts that come up in the tweets of those I follow. I compile those that seem most useful to me or my colleagues and then add links or descriptions to our faculty PD moodle pages. Once I've done all that, I move on to the day-to-day parts of my job (the parts that are actually in my job description!).
This is a great way to start the day. Because the daily grind, the constant stream of emails, the phone calls to return, and hours and hours of meetings and planning can make it difficult to remember the bigger picture: how can I be the best teacher and administrator at the best school with the best learning? Starting each day by reading posts and ideas from great teachers from all over the world helps me keep the focus on learning. I, in turn, can help spread that to my whole school.
Once the year gets started, I rarely have the time in my schedule to spend a block of time just reading and thinking about what I've read. So I really value the time I can have in summer to engage in the ideas out there. And I really value the opinions and ideas of all those teachers who are willing to put their ideas out there via blogs and twitter to keep the conversation moving.