Applications are one thing in this world that I never really feel good about once they are submitted. Sometimes I feel like I over think things and people don’t really care about all the little details that I have spent hours agonizing and word-smithing. Other times I wonder if the people I submit them to think I’m the biggest idiot that has ever walked this planet. I wish I could master the art of applying for something and feel good about the results. This week I got to apply for two different education related things that I’ve long wanted to be a part of.
I first heard about the Google Teacher Academy when I began looking at Twitter as more than another form of Facebook statuses. When I heard that they were offering one in London I figured that it wasn’t in the US, but it would be a fun place to travel to and a world-class experience of learning from both Google and other educators. After sitting down with my wife and talking about the expenses we decided I could apply, so I did. The actual application wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. I did like their limits on the characters you can use, which really forced me to think through everything I put in the application. The only difficult thing about the application is the creative 1 minute video about one of three topics. I searched up some examples that had been used in the past and really wanted to make a video that was as creative as I could make it in one minute. My video is not the best quality (due to the lack of a super nice camera and microphone), but I think the end result was well done and more creative than I thought I could pull off in a short amount of time. Now that everything is submitted I have to wait a couple of weeks to hear back. I’m trying not to get my hopes up, but I’m really excited about the opportunity to participate.
Every year our district’s education foundation offers educator grants to innovate in the classroom. I’ve never participated because I’ve been a coach and haven’t really had the down time to fill out everything in the time allotted. This year I wrote a grant based on the ROLE classroom that I’m running this year as well as an idea I heard about this summer. The idea is to let students decide how they would like to learn and cater that learning specifically to them. The idea is to have some students learning through a completely online unit design, some students learning through a blended unit design, and some students learning through a more traditional teaching method at the same time in the same classroom. To help facilitate this, I wrote my grant for some iPads for my classroom to help with the online unit. I’m really excited about this grant and if I am able to get the funding for it I will have my hands full during the winter months rewriting my units in three different ways. Of my two applications, this is the one that I’m least sure about because the application was written from a business point of view, but I’m not in the business world. I tried my best to decipher the application, but I hope they get the heart of my application.
At the end of the day, I did everything I could to make both of these a reality for me. I’m really hoping I get accepted for both. Big things could be happening in my classroom later this year!