Here Comes Summer

(cross-posted at TechLearning)

I get a kick out of my Twitter stats (produced by TweetStats):

I could interpret this graph in many ways, but one thing is certain: this past year, I’ve Twittered (meaning actually contributing to “micro-blogging”) more in the summer than during the school year. This comes as no surprise to me. There are a lot other things that I do more in the summer. I imagine this same graph could be used to illustrate how often I go swimming, how many podcasts I get accomplished, how many movies I watch, how many books I read, how late I stay up, how much ice cream I eat…

I think I could also apply this visual to one of the most important activities of my summer time: revision. Though I constantly edit my lessons throughout the year, nothing affords a complete reexamination or rebuilding as the summer break does. Much like turning over the soil in the garden and being able to add in rich fertilizer and compost, I can “rototill” my curriculum with this gift of time— toss out things that are no longer working to make room for new ideas and make existing successes even more formidable.

In the United States, we’re heading into our summer break and across the blogosphere, I see folks talking about the professional development that they’ll be undertaking. Books, conferences, projects… people are planning how to reexamine, revise, rip-apart, rebuild, refresh… I used to believe in a year-long school calendar— mostly to support students by not interrupting the learning process. I confess, I’ve changed over the years. I feel incredibly fortunate to be given this break to work on the craft of my profession out of the daily business of actually carrying out the task.

I’ve got several week-long tech courses to start my summer off and I’m also looking forward to the Building Learning Communities Conference where I’ll chat late into the night— face2face— with many other educators from around the world. Together we’ll share strategies, challenge each other’s ideas, dissect and review our years, examine where we’ve come from and where we are heading. I can’t wait. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to report on Twitter (http://twitter.com/bobsprankle).

What’s on your plate this summer? What do you have planned to refuel and rebuild? I’d love to hear your plans here in the comments, or back at my blog.