2011-PG1

Judy Nebergall
 * Learn to Teach to Learn**
 * Room 504**

Here's my online life:

Blog: wrtngtchr Twitter account: @wrtngtchr School web site: []

Email: judy.nebergall@thompsonschools.org

Here's my F2F life:

I teach high school writing and literature, and I am a literacy instructional coach.

There have been two periods in my adult life when my learning propelled me into an entirely new place of awareness. The first was a 5-year period of teaching full time while taking night and summer classes to earn an M.A. in Composition and Rhetoric. I wrote an 85-page thesis on an electric typewriter that literally changed my professional life. I learned how to think critically and even more importantly, I had the experience of defending my thinking to a panel of professors whose job was to challenge me.

The second period began three years ago when teaching was losing its lustre. Adjectives like //stagnant, stale, boring, tedious,// and //adequate// describe how I was feeling about the profession that had always inspired me. I wasn't ready to retire so I started looking for something interesting. I found google apps, Twitter, and Wordpress. Then I signed up for Professional Development programs to learn about incorporating technology into my classroom. I got a Promethean board. I found online publishing tools. I found Nings. I found hundreds of people in education who knew all kinds of cool stuff about how to jazz up my ordinary teaching.

The short version of why I'm facilitating a sharing conversation at this event is that I got so enthused about what was happening in my classroom, I had to share with my colleagues. I got to know my peers so much better and so many of them helped me through the frustrations of technological glitches at the most inconvenient moments. I've become a serious student of teaching as I teach. I affectionately refer to my students as lab rats. They give me very specific feedback on how I'm doing. This is too good to keep to myself.

The conversation about improving instruction and teacher evaluation always centers on curriculum, instruction, and assessments. The conversation I think we need to have at a national level should focus on how teachers learn to teach. I hope to inspire and to be inspired by a lively conversation about how teachers learn to teach so well their students are inspired to learn.

I hope to get to know you all better when we meet F2F