What did I learn in 2012?

I waited until the actual day to write my final blog post of 2012. Stephen Hurley invited Ontario bloggers to submit their favourite blog post. I looked through my posts from this year, and although there were times that I read and thought "wow - I wrote that? It sounds good", there were no posts that I felt warranted a specific-shout-out. Doug Peterson turned to his blog stats to determine which posts garnered the most attention. The biggest page read on my blog for 2012 (my Webinar Reflection in March) drew a grand total of 10 page views, so this system for determining my most insightful post would not work for me.

A lot of people and media outlets are doing the "2012 reflection" and if you click this link, you'll read about what one person learned in 2012. The gentleman in question is Father Edwin Gonsalves, and I am blessed enough to have him as my church's priest. He stressed that family is important, and that "all of us are teachers and students to one another".

I've had so many teachers and students this year, and I've learned so much from reading different books and articles, talking to different people, and experiencing different conferences and situations, that summing it all up in one document is very difficult. (Geez, how do we do it with report cards? We miss a lot of the real and personal learning, I guess.) Let me end 2012 then, not with a list of things I've learned but with a list of gratitude to all my "teachers" and "family members".

Thank you to:

• my husband James
• my daughter Mary
• my son Peter
• my parents, Fred and Gloria (and my relatives - my extended family)
• my students and fellow staff members at my school (present and past)
• my fellow TDSB TLs and Ontario educators, including my colleagues from the OSLA/OLA
• my pastor / associate pastor and fellow parishioners at my church (my "spiritual family")
• my Twitter PLN and online learning comrades (my "digital learning family")
• my friends, acquaintances, and even my "enemies"

I hope 2013 is a great year of learning for you - I hope it will be for me.