yesterday at camp

This was supposed to be yesterday's blog, but Blogger decided to eat part of the post.

Oh the best part of today, other than the food, of course, was just found at the end of the day. After exhilerating and challenging sessions in our Diversity groups (where our topic was White Privilege), the campus was a-buzz with chatter. Everyone was leaving the sessions wanted to talk more, wanting to continue to have the conversations, it was thrilling.

Being among this group of educators is challenging, humbling, and invigorating. Just like going to Chorus camp or soccer camp or computer camp brings delight to kids being grouped together by affinities, being at "KSI Teacher Camp" is that same feeling. I am here, on this amazing campus, with 75 other passionate, caring, dedicated, and dare I say intelligent teachers. Teachers who value life-long learning, who are not satisfied with the status quo and dare to go beyond the current state of their own schools to reach our children better.

I have struggled in the last few days with feeling really inadequate in my curriculum group. I am not a classroom teacher and worry that all of the wonderful information I'm learning will be very hard to apply in 40-min./week classes. I also worry that my contributions to the class are not useful to the other colleagues. I hope that I can bring some kind of perspective as to the role the specialist teacher can play, but I'm not sure how that is in the cards yet. However, today for a few minutes, I felt really useful as I set up a new NING for the group. I am very thankful to my school friends AA and ABD for teaching me about NINGs this year. They are such a great networking tool and when they catch on, are so useful in so many situations. I hope that the group finds this helpful.

(I wrote a whole three more paragraphs before blogger went into shut down....here is my attempted re-creation.)

In my search to get off of the LS campus in order to focus, I went into Princeton. The biggest reason I went was to burn off the desperate desire to go to the Life is Good store on the main street. After getting my fill of that, I headed over to Small World Coffee for a different study spot. Oh My Goodness, Good Coffee. Strangely served in a pint glass (burn unit anyone?), but tasty and not burnt like many coffees. I subsequently learned that SWC can be found in Lawrenceville at the local bakery. Once I was happily buzzed and up to my ears in readings, I hustled back to campus in time for dinner.

I am so glad that I came back for dinner. We have had good food but this was off the cuff good. Shrimp and Mussels Zuppa (not for me, but smelled great), Homemade cheese tortellini with local fresh tomato sauce, local roasted summer squash, local heirloom tomato and local (a mile down the road local) fresh mozzarella with basil, bread from the bakery across the street. We topped it all off homemade (again, across the street) shortcake with fresh organic whipped cream, local blueberries and strawberries. We were quite sufficiently stuffed as we went into our diversity session.

My head is in a constant state of whirl and I'm finding my addiction to caffeine growing stronger the more I don't sleep, but it is just because there is so much to do that there isn't enough time to process any of it. What I have processed is that there is so much I want to do at my school and I'm fearful that I won't even be able to do one-tenth of my hopes.

Alas, for now, I hold dearly onto my coffee cup, baby mac, and highlighter.

Peace.