Adjacent Possible Moments- 1/23/2020

This past Wednesday morning as I was driving to work, I was listening to #EduDuctTape podcast. If you have been following my blog, you know that this is one of my favorite podcasts. As he started the episode with his "soapbox moment," he shared how he was helping his fourth grade son's class with the math game, 24, and how that moment was a compilation of lots of adjacent possible moments.

Adjacent possible moments happen when a new set of possibilities is enabled by taking one step beyond the current state of things.  Every step opens up new possibilities, just like every conversation with a person can lead to new possibilities that you had not considered. (Jake Miller Tech)

So many “adjacent possible moments” have occurred for me as I connected to other outside of my school through both podcasts and Twitter chats. These moments have transformed my life and career. But recently, quite a few adjacent possible moments that have led to some amazing new opportunities. In fact, it all started on a normal Saturday morning ...

I woke up and got ready for my Saturday morning chats. The first one was a #pd4uandme where we reflected on 2019 and set goals for 2020. The discussion was so inspiring that when I saw that #leadlap was also discussing goals for the new year, I decided to join that chat. As the #leadlap chat concluded, the moderator that week, Jay Billy asked what was our Call to Action. Without overthinking it, I responded, "Present at conferences and write a book." Jay responded with by telling me to "Just Do It."These Saturday morning chats also led me to create my #oneword2020: CHALLENGE where I added writing a book and presenting as challenges I planned for 2020.  

Ironically the night before, I had published a blog about Be Real by Tara Martin after reading her amazing book. That same Saturday morning , Tara not only retweeted my blog, but also sent me some of the nicest feedback about my blog and some advice to further promote it. When I shared my dream of writing of a book with her, she didn't dismiss it but encouraged me. So now, I had two DBC authors pushing me to CHALLENGE myself. Wow!

Another one of my challenges shared that Saturday morning was to blog for another year. I started blogging on February 1, 2019, so my new goal became to add another year to that.

After hearing about the Teachers on Fire Magazine on the Teachers On Fire podcast in early November, I had contacted Tim Cavey on Twitter about posting my content there. Since November, I have been posting my blogs regularly. I love being able to share my voice in a new way. I sure have come a long way from someone who was totally afraid to put her voice out there at all.

While posting on the Teachers on Fire Magazine, I noticed another blogger, Katelynn Giordano, also posted regularly. So when I saw that she was being interviewed on the Teach Better Talk podcast, I tuned in to learn more about her.

I will be honest- I had never really listened to that podcast before. But listening to that episode, I became really engaged. So when Katelynn shared listeners could email her if we wanted to guest blog, I sent an email that day. Kaitlyn quickly wrote me back and now I am a guest blogger with my first post to be published on the Teach Better blog in March!