First and foremost, thank you – all of you – for your endorsement and kind words of encouragement in light of the professional changes I am currently experiencing. Tomorrow will be my first day with the Canyons District and I am both humbled and buoyed by the support I have been given.

Second, I had the opportunity to read another must-read book over the weekend. Roland S. Barth’s Lessons Learned (2003) is outstanding. While it may sound cliché, I feel like this book has been written for me because the timing of the reading and the topic and advice given make it feel like the stars have aligned in such a way that I’m left to exclaim, “Wow!” I devoured the book in two settings and have greatly appreciated Barth’s outlook on life and his amazing ability to apply his experiences in sailing with the workplace (and educational) environment.

In my initial thumbing through of the book, a paragraph caught my eye and has since stuck with me profoundly. Barth credits Edna St. Vincent Millay with this quote:

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book, nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book, nothing can help him. (p. 107)

Having participated in various social media arenas throughout the last several years (blogging, social networking, and the like), I’m convinced that this quote applies to online publishing as well as print. With that in mind, I’m even further assured at how vital it is for us, as educators, to teach our students today to properly utilize the technologies they so innocently (at least initially) take for granted.

Reference:

• Barth, R. (2003). Lessons Learned. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc.