Do you need to clean out the garage?

This past June I was working on one of my summer projects – cleaning out the garage! I put my plan in to action and began the task of cleaning out, organizing, scrubbing, and making piles of items to either discard or donate.  This project was long overdue. To help cheer me on, members of my #PTcamp PLN encouraged and checked in on my from time to time.  The task took much longer to complete that expected as I took my fair share of “bird walks” and sometimes stepped away from “garage detail” to attend to other projects and summer professional development.

The garage is now ready for our vehicles, the trash cans, organized storage, and a few new items that can now “fit into” the garage. What a great sense of accomplishment. I can now breathe a sigh of relief as I check this project off of my list.

This summer project has many similarities to our professional careers as educators. Are there things that we need to clean out, re-organize, or get rid of? Is there something new that we need to add to our “garage”? Let’s take a look at these four facets of the Garage Cleaning Experience:

Clean out: Take the time to see what you need and what you do not need. Sometimes we need to clear out the “dinosaur” facets of our pedagogy. Do we need to hang on to the “old” just for comfort sake? It’s is important to authentically evaluate what you truly need for today’s school. You need to make room for new things that will help you as you move along this “journey”. So, what do you need to clean out of your educational space?

Re-Organize: Take the time or streamline your desk, classroom, office space. Making your work space more efficient will help you expedite each project, activity, or assignment. This act of restructuring your work world will give you a greater sense of clarity. Do you need to reorganize?

Get Rid of…: What things do you need to eliminate from your work space? What things are collecting dust? What needs to go to make room for the new? If you haven’t used it in the past six months…get rid of it! You need to remove things that are cluttering your “Plate”. So, what needs to go?

What to add? In looking at your professional development, what do you need to add to your repertoire? In looking at Social Media, I would put the Voxer app at the top of the list.  What PD do you need to add this year? What books need to be added to your list? Take the time to consider what you need to include this year?

So the next time you need to clean out the garage, stain the deck, or take on a home repair project, think of the parallel this project has with our world of education. I look forward to hearing how your garage cleaning projects fair this fall. Take care!