innovation3

Here’s a glimpse of my K12 Online Conference 2009 presentation, Slippery Rocks & Hard Places. You can view the whole presentation on Thursday, December 10, 2009. Enjoy!

Teaser ~ Slippery Rocks & Hard Places: Twelve Bridges and Learning Matters from Dennis Richards on Vimeo.

This (from Space.com) should help us keep it all in perspective. Don’t sweat the small stuff? It’s all small stuff compared to this.

What does it bring to your mind? NCLB? Standardized testing?

The newly repaired Hubble Telescope gathered light from 5 billion light-years away to resolve intricate details in the galaxy cluster Abell 37.

To all the educators across the world:  What does this September mean to you?

In September 1970 I began my career as an educator in Massachusetts as a high school English teacher in a parochial (Catholic) school for girls in South Boston, Cardinal Cushing High School. Subsequently, I started school in September over the years in a variety of other places.

• North Andover, MA as a High School English Teacher
• Wayland, MA as a High School English Teacher
• Hopkinton, MA as a Junior-Senior High School English Department Head
• Harvard University Graduate School of Education as a Teacher on Sabbatical and graduate student
• Andover-Lawrence, MA as Director of the Collaborative School Project
• Nashua, NH as Educational Supervisor
• Reading, MA as Assistant Superintendent
• Reading, MA as Associate Superintendent
• Falmouth, MA as Superintendent

Today, September 1, 2008, thirty-eight years after my first September as an educator, I will am not be starting school. For a variety of reasons I have decided to leave full-time employment as a public school educator in Massachusetts. The loss I feel is palpable. I will miss my colleagues. Good friends in Falmouth need to focus on the new school year, not me. I will miss the students and their families. They will be busy this week adjusting to the new school year after a beautiful Cape Cod summer. I will miss the people of the community. They have generous hearts and I will never forget their spirit of community.

What the future holds remains to be seen. My professional life feels like a puzzle right now. All the pieces are scattered about. Over the next 12 months I will continue to learn and teach as I always have, but now I have to discover new spaces where that can take place. So far five themes seem to be emerging: Technology Enhanced Learning; Family; Poetry; Skillful Teaching and Learning; Influence and Advocacy. We’ll see.

Tomorrow I will publish my first post of the new school year. True, I am not going to be associated with a school district this year, but since my heart and mind will always be devoted to working with educators to understand what we do well and how we can do better, I will continue to organize my life around the school year.

In the coming months I am going to work on finding ways to have conversations and establish connections with educators who have interests similar to mine. To that end, I plan to write more, using this blog to publish, and I hope to expand the number of people who subscribe to and comment on my posts. I want to nurture a community of like-minded educators using all the tools Web 2.0 provides. This is going to be an adventure that I will share with you at innovation3 and other spaces I will introduce you to over the year. I hope you will visit often and participate in what I hope will become a community of learners.

So until tomorrow…. Learn. Communicate. Collaborate. Create. Share.

Retirement Announcement (Click to read.)

Farewell Letter (Click to read.)