Loved starting the New Year with an email from NWP colleague Kevin Hodgson, whose creative energy and projects never cease to amaze and inspire. So what did I love about this morning’s email, my first message of 2009?… An invitation to reflect on my year and share with the DIAS community…. An introduction to a new tool, (something Kevin sends our way on a regular basis), Xtranormal. Oh my, think of the classroom applications for this tool!

….Inclusion of music (another frequent bonus from Kevin)…. And the promise of continuing on with this valued part of my PLN into the New Year.

Thanks, Kevin, and Happy New Year to you and the DIAS worldwide community:-)

What I most value about Web 2.0 are the multiple opportunities to join groups of like-minded colleagues and to craft and continually expand my own personal learning network. The Day in a Sentence community is one of my favorite communities. To begin with, it stems from my friend Kevin, whose enthusiasm, expertise, and sense of digital adventure tends to be infectious. When Kevin takes a blogging vacation, he passes the DIAS weekly postings on to others. This week, for instance, educator and writer Deb Renner Smith, whose blog I’ve just added to my RSS feed, is hosting DIAS. The DIAS rules are simple. The idea is to wrap up your day or your week in a sentence. But you’re allowed to break the rules. If you need two sentences, no problem. If you can summarize in just a phrase, or an image, or even a poem, that works too. And we’re a global community too. With the new school year now under way in most districts, many, many of my colleagues putting in tons of extra hours in hopes of making this the best year ever for their students. But this week my DIAS comes from a student perspective:

This week my son, who has more than once dropped out of school, called me as he enthusiastically headed off for a new semester at a local community college, and he left this message: “So much depends on getting a good teacher.”

To my son’s comment, I’d like to echo a thought posted today by Bud the Teacher inviting all of us to “go do good things” as I head back in to re-read a related post on Two Writing Teachers.

I have not heard the final tally yet on the number of California teaches who were “pink slipped” this week, but in my district alone the number is over 200! Unless there is a surprise in my mailbox today (5:00 today - the “ides” of March - is the cutoff for notification), I still have my job. Given that most of the cutoffs will go to those with the least seniority, California schools will be losing many of their newest teachers, along with the energy, enthusiasm, and innovations they bring fresh from their credential programs.

The Voice Thread below is in recognition that all of us as educators will be impacted either directly or indirectly by the 2008-09 budget cuts. I left a message earlier on Murcha’s Day in a Sentence Voice Thread, but wanted to also dedicate today’s post to this painful topic. Comments are welcomed!

Note: Pink slip images copied from http://www.wackycats.com/lingerie%204.htm