Do you feel it?

Like most school districts across the land, we are closed and our government has encouraged staying at home.  In my job as instructional technology coach, there is always more to learn than I have hours in the day.

Or week.

Or month.

Or year.

I feel a need. 

I feel an urgency.

For the past year, I have felt such a sense of urgency to try and get people to know some of the things I've got the capacity to teach them.  I want to share things I know that can make their work more streamlined, organized, easier.  I want to share things that can help their students be more creative, engaged, and challenged.  It has been a far greater sense of urgency on my part than most have felt the need to learn.

For the past several months I've been quietly telling teachers with whom I work that I won't always be there to support their teaching and learning and they really need to take more risks and learn more.  Yet, I think those teachers have sort of swept that concept under the rug thinking that even if I am not there, somebody will be there to teach them or show them or help them or just provide support as they are working through.

This week, however, we have entered our third week at home.  We are supporting and encouraging distance learning like people have never experienced before.  Now there seems to be an urgency.

This morning our instructional technology team offered virtual learning for teachers.  When we have hosted these events in the past, participation has seen a dozen or so people log on and take part.  Once, I had a group of thirty-eight.  At this time of year, participants were generally just trying to check a box and earn professional development hours.  Today, we had record numbers log on and learn.  There was no extrinsic incentive like earning credit hours. There was no requirement by an administrator to get on board and embrace an initiative.  There was a personal urgency. 

If nothing else, this unusual time in our world has helped many recognize that our world has changed and we are being forced to change along with it in order to rise to the needs and expectations that are present.  We cannot cling to the old just because it has worked for us in the past.  We have to embrace the new as well.  We have to adapt ourselves to the newness that keeps surrounding us.  There is an urgency.

I could feel it all day today as I fielded questions and requests for support from teachers.  I could feel it as my partner and I shared the basics of a different means of sharing opportunities for students to learn.  I could feel it when I chatted with my children and grandchildren in the early evening.  Please let us hold on to that urgency and enfold it into our natural being so that we continue to grow and learn and make this world a more positive and better place. 

I feel a sense of urgency like never before.  Do you?