I love a challenge! But when that challenge includes encouraging more educators to share their thoughts and ideas via their blogs, I get doubly excited! A week ago, @MrSurti threw down the gauntlet by posting his three New Year Commitments and then tagging a number of us and encouraging us to follow suit. I have been so impressed with the creativity and thought-provoking posts of my colleagues as they have been sharing their selection of commitments. So, before the newness of this school year becomes stale, I best share my top three.

•  Put Feet to my Tweets ~ My day usually begins with  reading a number of Tweets and then commenting on  them as I share them with my followers. On average, I  share about 5 per day. Over the past couple of years, that  has added up to over 4000 tweets. Although each idea  represented within the articles is meaningful and  relevant, I frequently find myself lamenting the fact that implementing these ideas is much more complicated than just retweeting them. One great idea that I recently tweeted involved adopting the concept “walking” meetings. There are too many days where we find ourselves confined to meeting rooms and the most steps we take are the three flights of stairs that we mount each morning. So, here’s a heads up to my team members and an invitation to store a pair of comfy shoes at their desks.

• Encourage the Teams to Dream ~ Inspire, support, challenge, motivate, provoke, persuade and the list of adjectives could go on and on. As I’ve shared before, I am truly blessed with the teams that I get to work with. They challenge me to be a stronger leader, a more dedicated learner and one who continues to test the boundaries of the status quo. As we enter our third year together, I commit to being more purposeful and intentional in ensuring that we are always working towards our dreams of how best to support educator professional learning. 

• Connect the Unconnected ~ If you are reading this post, then you have accessed it via Facebook or Twitter and therefore you are already a connected educator. Preaching to the connected “converted” may make us feel good, but we are not truly building capacity in the ranks of our connected educators. As the 2015-2016 school year unfolds, I commit to exploring and implementing new and creative ways to encourage more educators to see the benefits of using platforms such as Twitter or blogging to extend their own professional learning network.

Thank you to @MrSurti for the nudge. Step one was  stating the commitments, step two (the most important  step) is to put them into place.  I’m wondering if those of  us who have publically published our commitments would be willing to provide a monthly update on how those commitments are taking shape and what impact they are having.

What are you committed to doing differently this year?

Come write with me…