Be of Use

After 7 years I'm moving on from my job in the Sheboygan Area School District. The right fit came along two weeks ago when I was offered the new position of Data Coordinator and Instructional Technology Integrator for the Germantown School District. It's been a great experience in Sheboygan, and I wouldn't be moving on had it not been for the work we've done with mobile devices over the last three years. Good things have happened in the SASD and will continue to with the 1:1 initiative and digital conversion of curriculum. It's too bad I'm moving on during such an exciting time, but when opportunity knocks... I officially start Wednesday, but have a few loose ends still to tie up this week and next in Sheboygan. What a start to the school year. Our oldest son will start his first day of Pre-Kindergarten and I'll be at new staff inservice.

Whenever someone thanks me for helping them, the line I often give them is stolen/paraphrased from John Irving's novel  The Cider House Rules... "we all must be of use." Since I graduated from high school 15ish years ago, I've been trying to figure out how I can best be of use to this world. I know I'm still working on this journey. My first attempt to be useful was in journalism, writing for the hometown newspaper, then the student newspaper at UW-Oshkosh the Advance Titan . I didn't see it as a career, so I moved onto the School of Education to be a social studies teacher. I never fell in love with that, but knew I my career path lay in schools. After graduation it was off to grad school to get my library media license, where I found a career that was a fit for me. Or at least for a while. As a library media specialist I loved interacting with all the district's students, staff members and families. I was working on information skills with high schoo...