Writing on a course

I was on a Learning and Teaching Conference today and enjoyed attending three very different but universally inspirational workshops and just one thoroughly boring one.  Not a bad success rate. 

My next challenge is to see how much of this inspiration I am able to transfer into my teaching.  I have to say I fear for my success.  Partly this is because I am often lack confidence in my imagination when it comes to planning lessons.  It is also because I don't feel that I am likely to have much support in school for trying out some of the ideas which I saw today.

For example one of the workshops was about using the Nintendo Wii as a source of inspiration for writing.  I could see tremendous opportunity here to use this to motivate some of my class but I have serious doubts about my chances of persuading my headteacher of the merits of video games as a stimulus for writing.  Similarly I would love to use a blog as a means of publishing my children's writing but I have already hit my head against the wall of using the internet interactively; and that was just with the school's own learning platform. 

As part of the workshopon using blogs the course participants were asked to write a poem, publ;ish it on a wiki and experience receiving feedback.  I haven't written a poem for ages but I was quite pleased with my effort so I took the opportunity to copy it over here to my blog.


The year turns bringing morning light,

lightness of spirit,
anticipation of warmth.

Yesterday's fog was a disappointment,
but short lived
as the sun burnt through.

This morning there was fog again;
but it had lost its power
to dampen my outlook.

No sun has burnt through today.
Today the fire is metaphorical,
professional inspiration!