The assignment? Write a reflective blog post telling about one item of interest from your reader. One? Just one? I’m going to cheat a bit here since I’ve been using an RSS reader for about a year now (or just over) and dig deep back into one of the blog posts that I had starred in my Google Reader. After all, isn’t that what the star is there for but to help me dig into my older posts for the gems?

The one post I chose is from the Injenuity blog by Jennifer Jones (known as injenuity on most networks). Her post is about the concept of Viral Professional Development, a topic that really hit home with me given my own personal struggles with providing professional learning opportunities in my own district. As the “lone” instructional technologist for a school system with 12,500 students and growing, I find it disconcerting that I cannot make more of a difference and at times I wonder what kind of impact I can make (if any) in my role. When I read Jen’s blog post though, she made so much sense and I was able to breathe a little better. I ended up commenting on her post, which you can read by scrolling down her page, but I’ll reiterate here a couple of key pieces that truly resonated with me.

First of all was this:

“but I have found a strategy that is working well and keeping pace with my goals, expectations and work load”

That for me was huge and I still struggle with it. I want to do so much, but given my own personal pace, distractions at work, and work load it is difficult to stick to it.

The second was this:

“Just let it go.”

That’s a huge pill to swallow. To simply let something go is a frightening prospect for me, but that is exactly what I’ve had to do. Focus on what I can do and let the rest coast. Just breathe!


Image Source: Flickr Szlea