Finding My Own Path

Yesterday I observed my own distaste and resistance to planning ahead. Ask my poor husband, ask me to commit to a plan due to come to fruition in...say 24 months time and I will put off making commitment. How he got me down the aisle considering that, I'm not entirely sure...

But for me it really is all about the journey. I don't like to lock in plans in case something else catches my eye. I take the same approach when it comes to my teaching.

I like to know where to start from with a unit of work and I like to know where it's heading. You can be sure I'll stop listening once I have that information - my brain will already be looking for the ways to make the connection between the two. And when someone pulls me up and says, "But this is the most direct route," I'm likely to look at them briefly and then say something like, "Look at this shiney new eTool...", or "Have you seen...?", "But what about...".

My path may take more hard work because I'm finding the path for myself, but I love the adventure, the surprises, the success after solving a major road block. I love the sense of achievement.

Besides, what might I (and my students) miss out on if I just took the same route that's always been used?

I guess my husband could blame Miss Richmond for this attitude of mine. Afterall her passion for Robert Frost's poems saw me fall in love with his work too. And even now, 12 years later his poem, "The Road Not Taken" springs to the front of my mind as I think about my desire to forge new paths:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth

Then took the other as just as fair

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear

Though as for that, the passing there

Had worn them really about the same

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet, knowing how way leads onto way

I doubted if I should ever come back

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence

Two roads diverged in a wood

And I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference

~ Robert Frost

What doors have opened for you and your students by not following the "usual path"?