Erin Mutch is the Environmental Education and Management Learning Coordinator for  Thames Valley District School Board.  She is just about to complete her first year in the role and  her passion for her work is evident; whether in face to face conversations or in the ways in  which she documents the learning in her portfolio via social media.  Erin consistently highlights  the great work that teachers and students are embarking on as they weave environmental  responsibility into various content areas.  I have so much to learn from her  and her  commitment to ensuring that our world is preserved and respected.

I can’t wait to read more of her posts!

Link to Erin’s Blog:  A Caveat

http://erinmutch.edublogs.org/2015/06/03/a-caveat/

My Comments:

Erin, I couldn’t agree with you more! Learning is the furthest thing from static and a true learner is always open to thoughts and ideas which may slightly or radically change their perspective. By sharing our thinking in such a public place, we do open ourselves up to feedback from others. Some may agree with us, which leads to validation and some may disagree with us which forces us to either modify our thinking or articulate more strongly our original idea.

Regardless of the reaction, our learning can’t help but change and evolve. Learners love those speeding trains!

I would imagine that a number of new bloggers can relate to Erin’s feelings about those first few  posts.  In chatting with her yesterday at work, it was so exciting to hear her say that the fear of  hitting the Publish  button is diminishing with each post.  I wonder how much more  understanding and empathetic we become as educators when we place ourselves in similar  situations as our students.  We have all encountered students who were reluctant to write for a  variety of reasons ~ fear of someone else reading their work is one of those reasons!

Modeling  how to overcome that fear, by jumping in and writing is a wonderful way of making our own learning (and all the emotions that accompany it) visible!