Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs. In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year. Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home. I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
I have been trying to catch up with episodes of George Couros’s excellent Innovator’s Mindset Podcast. Of course, I had to revisit the episode in which I was lucky to appear. While listening to it, I began to realize when I was talking about my favorite teachers. They were actually the ones who allowed me to experience personalized learning. This is nearly 40 years ago! In 1997, the movie of the year was Beverly Hills Cop 2, and the biggest song of the year was “ Want to Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston. Specifically, Mr. Vollrath, who I talked about in the episode, realized that it was not the ability to spell a word but to know what it means and use it in the proper context. As I write this post right now, I am still not the best speller, but there are tools that can assist me with it. I see red lines in Google Docs that alert me if I misspelled something. It’s like he understood the WHY of the words, which was not the spelling but the understanding of the words an...