Professional Networking - Choices, choices choices!

The new National Professional Standards for Teachers place a fairly hefty importance on professional networking.  This means there's a choice to be made.  A big one.

Do you want to be a cog in the machine or do you want to be the motor that drives it?

Sometimes, because I'm the coordinator of the Wodonga CRT Support Network, people lose sight of the fact that I'm also a Teacher.  Teaching and learning are my passions which make me such a good candidate for being a Network coordinator.  I also now present a Professional Development workshop for CRTs which can further cloud the issue, I'm going to have to buy some colourful hats to put on so people can tell which role I'm filling at the time I think!

I do all of the organizational stuff for PD workshops and run meetings and so forth but I'm also 100% interested in sharing what I know and listening to others to fill in the blanks on what I don't.  The thing is... I never thought I was capable of it all until I tried! I've built the Network up to well over 100 members with a lot more keeping tabs on what we do.  I've built up this blog to thousands of views a month.  I've helped many teachers see alternate gateways that allow them to have more fun teaching while providing more fun for their students with my PD Workshop.  Me.  "Just a CRT".

I certainly have holes in my teaching like most of us do.  Some things I'm great at.  Most things I'm good at.  A couple of things I struggle with.  I guarantee you that you've got a couple things you are great at too!  And you'd be surprised how many people want to hear from you about the things that you're great at.  Not just the other teachers around you but the millions of teachers who access the Internet each and every day.

This blog is about a local CRT network and the things that we come up with in meetings.  Topics raised, the conclusions we come to and further thoughts after the fact.  A lot of the stuff here is mostly of local interest but here's our distribution of where views of this blog have come from in the last month:

People from all over the place are coming to get hints and tips from our happy little community and are interested in what we are saying!

We ALL have ideas worth sharing and there's people out there who realize it, searching out teacher blogs or YouTube channels and the like, keen to get as many insights into the profession as they can get their hands on. So will you be content just to build your Professional Network and get access to the ideas of others or do you want to take a turn in the driver's seat too?  We've done it, SO CAN YOU!

Regards,

Mel.