What Debbie Did … 001

Thanks to Ken Bauer and Ben Werdmüller for the idea and questions ! My previous blog post explains the background to this.

The core questions:

I’m not sure I will make an entry every day and if I will do the stretch questions each time but I really like the thought of answering question prompts so we will see how we go … I wanted to time myself on this but forgot. I don’t really want to spend long on doing this as a general rule of thumb but as this is my first attempt it will no doubt take me longer.

Deb Entry 001

Journal Entry for Monday 3 August 2020

What did you do today? 

Today (Monday 3 August – oh my word it is August already where has the year gone ) was a typical busy day at work. We are gearing up for our Online Summer Summit so there is a lot to keep me out of mischief as well as the usual stuff.

I start at 7.30am now and finish at 3.30pm which is great for my work life balance. I find that starting early helps me find some thinking and planning time. I caught up with a lot of stuff that needed doing.

I then managed to catch up with the lovely Ken Bauer for #educoffee chat earlier this evening which was a real tonic. We talked about how Ken has been running this initiative since March and finds it really helpful – it is his ‘social time’. It was so nice to speak to Ken – one of his students popped in to say hello too, I didn’t get chance to chat much to him as I couldn’t stay long though but it was great to have him join us. We chatted about all sorts of things from what I am hoping to look at in my research in terms of emotional support for educators, the importance of connections in general, affinity spaces, communities of practice, student induction, how some of these new informal conversational tools could be used ( I have recently been playing with something called High Fidelity that could be really useful … that reminds me I need to write a blog post on that ). We also talked about how we have worries for our pets who seem to have got so used to having us all at home during lockdown. That is a lot to pack into twenty minutes.

What did you enjoy? 

I got to share some photos with my lovely team mates today after a busy weekend where I managed to see some friends on Saturday and had a family day trip out on Sunday for the first time since lockdown started. This made a very pleasant change to my usual answer of ‘same old same old’ to the ‘ what was your weekend like ?’ question. This even included photos of a HAPPY teenager … yep you heard that right.

What did you find difficult? 

Hmm, I haven’t managed to complete my appraisal notes which should have been in today. I had started but not finished as other stuff just took priority.

What has changed? 

Well I have made my first entry into my reflections journal …

And then, there are some more ‘stretch’ questions:

What are you grateful for? 

My husband and kids who keep me sane and make me remember what is really important.

Which changes do you want to keep? 

I’d like to try and keep writing some sort of journal entry. I hope I find it helpful. I would also like to try and and get out and about more.

What has stayed the same?

Well I guess pretty much everything is still the same …

When did you last laugh? 

On the weekend – with my friends and family