Three years ago, in January 2013, we launched this blog- LitLearnAct, short for Literacy Learning in Action. We love collaborating and learning from each other, and we began this blog with the hope of sharing what we were talking and thinking about with other educators.
On our first night of classes at Teacher College, we sat down next to each other, and the rest as they say- is history. We’ve been friends ever since. Writing partners, doctoral students, and co-authors, we love learning from each other.
When people ask us about our writing process, we laugh and say, “It’s the best part of our week!” Why? We laugh, we vent, we agonize over how to teach certain concepts, but most importantly we learn from each other and that makes us better teachers. We feel so lucky to have found each other! Our collaborations continually inspire us to be the best teachers we can be.
This blog has meant so much to us because we’ve been able to share, reflect, and connect with educators from around the world. Teaching can be an isolating profession if we let it, and one of the most important parts of teaching is growing and learning. We’ve found that the best way for learning is through collaboration- with each other, our colleagues, our classmates at Teachers College, fellow educators at conferences, and online (yay Twitter and FB!).
We live in different states. Sonja lives in New York and Dana lives in Connecticut. Most Sundays, we drive thirty miles to meet each other in the middle at a Panera Bread. We order our breakfast sandwiches and cozy cups of hot chocolate, and then we talk. We talk about our school week, our worries, and our wonders. We share highlights and lowlights. We help each other develop lesson ideas and teaching points. We write together and we read together. This collaboration has helped us become better teachers, and we are so happy that we can write about our experiences on this blog.
We are so grateful that we are in a global community of educators who want to share, learn, and grow each day. Each day we post an idea that we’ve been thinking about or have been working on in the classroom, and each day we learn 10+ new ideas from Twitter and other blogs. It is truly incredible how much online PD can happen in a single day! Thank you!
Although this blog is a single, small voice in cyberspace, we are grateful each day to share our journey, and we love everyone’s comments and questions. We feel welcome in this online community of learners- on Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, etc., and we love learning with everyone each day.
Thank you for sharing this journey with us. We look forward to learning so much more.
Dana and Sonja
LitLearnAct 