Hi Colleagues,
Thanks to those of you who reached out to check on my health after I tested positive to COVID, I appreciate it 😃
I came out of isolation a couple of days ago, and other than a lingering sense of tiredness I’m pretty much back to normal.
HEALTH & WELLBEING
Given my recent health woes I’m keen to get as healthy as possible. I tend to be pretty good in this space, but it’s not always easy coming out of the festive season.
What works for me:
· Plan to exercise everyday – walk, run, ride, swim, or weights.
· Drink lots of water
· Turning off technology after dinner and getting to sleep at a time that ensures I can get 8 hours
I am yet to set myself any physical goals for this year. Any suggestions?
In past years I have completed 7Peaks, ran 1,000km for the year, or ran 10km under my age in minutes. Note I didn’t achieve all of these in the one year.
A couple of weeks into the New Year is a good time to revisit any goals, or to set a new goal(s).
WRITING
My biggest goal this year is to continue writing and being creative. 2021 led me to creating my own website, writing articles, and generating this newsletter. In 2022 I want to be as consistent and prolific as possible with my public writing. This will help grow the Education Enclave community from the current 617 subscribers that I’m very grateful for.
If you haven’t already, I would encourage all of you to build a writing habit. The two standout reasons for doing so are:
· increased wellbeing; there is a lot of evidence that supports the therapeutic benefits of writing. I know it works for me. Given the circumstances of the last two years we can all do with a positive bump to our wellbeing.
· it will lead you to becoming a stronger educator. Putting yourself in the shoes of your students is an important thing to do. Last year I observed a powerful example demonstrated by a graduate primary school teacher. They were engaged in a narrative writing unit, and she confided in me how she found it hard to revise her own narrative to include foreshadowing, which was the explicit teaching focus. It ended up being a brilliant lesson. How many of us attempt the tasks we set our students? Needless to say, she is an impressive young educator who has a very bright future.
50-Word Story
If you would like to go further than developing your own writing habit, you might be interested in submitting a 50-word story to this site http://fiftywordstories.com
A 50-word story is a piece of fiction written in exactly 50 words. That doesn’t mean “roughly” 50 words; it doesn’t mean “as close to 50 words as possible”; it doesn’t mean 50 words or fewer. It means exactly 50 words.
As with any other form of fiction, a 50-word story should have a beginning and an end, a plot and character development (even if they are only implied), and a theme, meaning, or purpose of some sort. Many 50-word stories are built around twists or climactic moments. Someone’s writing who I admire from afar is Salman Ansari. Salman was a mentor in the writing course I completed last year - Write Of Passage. One of Salman’s submissions was recently published on Fifty Word Stories and was selected as the Story Of The Week. I’ve included it below:
Point Price
I loved visiting the gallery, licking every piece clean with my eager eyes, running home to pour inspiration onto canvas, until that terrible day, when I was asked to critique, and I did, pointing and pontificating to an eager audience, lumbering home stuffed full of applause, but starved of passion.
Let me know if you, or some of your students take up the challenge.
Wishing you all good health and that your holidays are going well.
Thanks for reading and see you next week,
Danny.
P.S Feel free to provide me with any feedback regarding the newsletter, or anything for that matter via email. Also, let me know what topics you would be interested in reading more about.
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