Here's the plan

I hear that the best way to get attention on
the web is with cute pictures of kittens.

When it comes to explaining what I will be doing with my award money I get so excited that I begin describing the minutia of what every day will hold.  When I do this I can see people's eyes gloss over.  My wife describes this phenomenon by explaining that when she no longer follows what I am saying, her brain goes to a safe place where she imagines a kitten batting at a piece of yarn.  Below is an excerpt from my proposal, describing in broad terms what I want to do with my award.


Receiving this award would afford me the opportunity to explore and experience the ways in which individuals with intellectual disabilities are educated, incorporated, supported, and encouraged to demonstrate independence in various countries and cultures.  It is my goal, both personally and professionally, to impact and improve how individuals with disabilities are viewed and included within our society.  My proposal includes travel to three major stops abroad: London, England; Kilkenny, Ireland; and Dublin, Ireland; as well as participation in state and nation wide training opportunities.  It is my hope that the information gained from these combined experiences will not only impact my classroom performance, but that my school, community, and volunteer domains will benefit as well.  My stops in London, Kilkenny, and Dublin will all be centered on communities that are part of L’Arche International.  Since I first became aware of L’Arche, I have been intrigued by their mission and ideology.  They believe in working to support people with intellectual disabilities in order for them to take their rightful place in our communities and in our societies.  As an international organization, L’Arche seeks to promote inclusion, the valuing of diversity, and international solidarity, and seeks to be a sign toward the building of respectful societies founded on relationships between people of differing intellectual capacity, social origin, religion and culture.  At the heart of L’Arche Communities are relationships between people with and without intellectual disabilities. In these Communities a respectful relationship is built between people who treat each other as of equal value, providing security and allowing for growth, personal development and freedom to become more fully the people they want to be.  It is this focus on respect and relationships that I find to be inspiring.  Although the Communities are built on a basic framework, each has a unique personality based on its location and members.  I believe that by experiencing multiple L’Arche Communities (large, small, urban, rural) I may gain insights that will impact my classroom and beyond.

Some of the details have changed since I made my proposal, primarily including the addition of cities that I will be visiting in Ireland.  Now, my list of cities includes Cliffs of Moher, Cork, Donegal (homeland of the Early family), Dublin, Kilkenny, and Sligo.  If you have ever been to any of these places and can recommend specific places to visit, please let me know in the comment section.  Along with my focused time visiting and learning in the L'Arche Communities,  I also intend to do some sight seeing.

It's a major award!

It's no leg lamp, but a $12,000.00 award to learn while traveling the world is certainly nothing to shake a 'Red Ryder carbine-action, two hundred shot Range Model air rifle with a compass in the stock and this thing which tells time' at.  Through the R.E.B. process, I was able to to write a proposal that requested anywhere from 4 to 12 thousand dollars.  Once I came up with a loose idea of what I wanted to do, I started working on a budget.  Now, let's get one thing straight: I am not overly proficient with handling money.  Fortunately I married a woman who is, and I have been able to get by on that for the last 10 years.  The first budget I worked out came in at a scant $21,000.  See what I mean when I say I'm not money savvy?  My original plan started with a stint visiting Sweden, but that was the first thing to get the axe.  This brought my new total down to somewhere around 13K.  This was more like it.  I could work with this.  After cutting back on a few things, including my food allowances, which you know I hated to do, I ended up coming in just under the cap at $11, 990.  Not knowing how much The Community Foundation liked nice round numbers, that was the sum I submitted.  When I received my award envelope at the Library of Virginia in November, I was surprised to see that they actually rounded my proposal up the additional $10 that I had not included in my budget.  Just so you know, I have already re-allocated that money to my food budget.  Specifically, my fish 'n chips budget.

Waiting to exhale

In February, 2011 I found out that I had been nominated for an R.E.B. Award for Teaching Excellence.  The R.E.B. Foundation is a supporting organization of The Community Foundation.  The program is based on the belief that a child's educational experience ... should develop basic skills and form life-long positive habits toward learning and discipline.  To that end, grants are awarded to individual teachers to support professional development and enrichment activities and to share educational ideas and experiences with teacher colleagues.  Grants support projects of the teacher's own design, including grants that support advanced degrees and world travel.

The process, from the time I was nominated until I found out that I had received an award took nine months.  Those nine months were quite excruciating, but on the positive side, I learned something about myself: I am not good at having to wait nine months to find out information.  I first had to answer three questions about my teaching, namely my experiences, goals, and philosophy of teaching.  There were strict parameters, including having to answer all three questions on one side of one page.  If you read my previous post you would know that in the past this would have been a gargantuan task because of my minimalist approach to writing.  However, I seem to have gotten over that, and now have a harder time limiting myself.  Whether or not that is a good thing, I am not sure.  I tried every trick I could to make enough room to fit my responses, including reducing margins, removing the questions themselves, and going with the smallest allowable font. 

Then came the first waiting period.  Did they like my responses enough to move me through to the next round?  Finally, I received the ecru envelope with the interlocking burgundy C's in the top left corner that I grew to love and anticipate, and found out that I had advanced.  Now came the hardest part: developing a proposal that I felt would re-energize and re-invigorate me as a teacher, as well as show the reviewers who I was as a person.  Proposals did not have to tie directly to what you teach in the classroom, but for me, I wanted it to.  Unfortunately my self-imposed criterion made things a little more difficult.  I felt like if I were a math or science teacher I could write a proposal to travel the world visiting and participating in juggling conferences.  I could have based my proposal on exploring the physics of different juggling objects as they move through space, or the mathematic principals behind siteswap juggling notation; but deep down I knew that was not what I needed to be doing.  Finally, after talking to some of my CRC friends, Anne and Bill, I learned of L'Arche International, and my course was set.  (I will write more about L'Arche International in later posts)  

I researched, budgeted, and began to develop my proposal during the summer.  Part of my proposal had to focus on my dissemination plan.  How was I going to share what I was learning and experiencing with my colleagues, families, and friends?  That is where the inspiration for this blog came from.  Once I finished writing my proposal I again had to go back to waiting.  I took this as another opportunity for growth, and tried not to scream with joy to every new person I came across about the prospective opportunity that might be waiting for me just around the bend.  The next step of the process was an interview set for some time in October.  Now, I say interview, but this was no ordinary interview.  This was a come in, sit front and center, and field questions from a twenty-person panel.  Yowza!  Although I consider myself to be a people person, the though of this interview gave me the heebiest of jeebies.  Everyone kept telling me that I would do fine, and fortunately they were correct, but that did not help me sleep any better the weeks leading up the the fateful date.  The panel could not have been more welcoming or reaffirming, and I left the room with a good feeling, but again, I had another month-long wait ahead of me.

My good friend Ed Bosha came to
support me at the awards ceremony.

Finally, in mid-November, I along with all of the other thirty finalists, their families, and administrators gathered at the Library of Virginia in downtown Richmond to find out our fates.  There was an electricity in the air, as everyone was waiting to see if they were going to be one of the lucky ones.  There were several speakers, with very nice messages about teachers, the impact they make, and the importance of recognizing all teachers for the work they do.  Unfortunately, I don't think any of the finalists were able to give their full attention to what was being said.  I know that a lot of my attention was going into drying the palms of my hands on my pants.  After what felt like an eternity, they began announcing the names of those who would be receiving awards.  Luckily for me, my name was called second!  My wife let out a squeak that I am sure had dogs turning their heads for five square blocks.  I am so happy and grateful to have been selected, and cannot wait to embark on my journey.

If you know of a teacher, kindergarten through twelfth grade, in the metro-Richmond area, that you would like to nominate for an R.E.B. Award I encourage you to do it.  Below are the links for The Community Foundation and the R.E.B. Award itself.

http://www.tcfrichmond.org/

http://www.tcfrichmond.org/receive/nominate-an-individual-for-an-award/reb-awards-for-teaching-excellence/

Welcome to my writing

I never thought that I would have my own blog. When I was a kid, writing was a chore, and I dreaded the thought of anyone having to read my writing. However, if you are reading this, it is a decision you are making for yourself, so I don't feel too guilty. If it were not for my 8th grade English teacher, Mrs. Morton, I am not certain that I would have ever even learned to write a complete sentence in the first place. As much as I hated every second of her class, she taught me the craft of writing, and for that I am forever grateful. Every sentence required a a minimum of 10 words, every paragraph required at least 5 sentences. I would sit and count out my words and sentences making sure that I was doing the bare minimum to have my work accepted. Little did I know that I was effectively doubling the amount of time that I was spending on my homework, as well as editing my work over and over as I tried to generate my 50-word paragraphs. I am excited about the opportunity this blog affords me, and getting to share my experiences, thoughts, and reflections through my writing. I thank you for taking the time to read my posts, and would love to hear from you. I hope you enjoy following me on this journey as much as I am looking forward to living it. Thank you, and there is more to come...I promise.

What's in a name?

Early.  It is a common word in the English language.  People say it all of the time.  Early education.  Early afternoon.  The early bird gets the worm.  Yet, whenever someone asks for my last name, be it in a store, at a hotel, or over the phone, and I respond with "Early," it is as if I am introducing them to a new sanskrit word.  In these situations I am usually met with the retort of "How do you spell that?"  My response is always "Early... Like early in the morning."  I don't know when it began, or why it happened, but my guess is that it was sometime in my teens, when I felt like I had fielded that questions enough times, and my sarcasm was beginning to take bloom.  Could I respond differently?  Sure, but this one seems to work.  I could always go the route of my amazing wife, who has only had to live with this question for 1/3rd as long as I have, and respond with "Early, like the word."  Yeah, her gift of sarcasm was fully developed by the time she had to begin answering inquisitions into her new surname.  I spent a lot of time trying to pick out a name for this blog, but when I said this one, it just felt right.  Early... Like early in the morning.