30 Goals Challenge - 1. Define your Moment

Shelly Terrell has just launched the fourth cycle of her 30 Goals Challenge.  This is an annual project aimed at educators.  It sets 30 short-term goals each year, the idea being to get us to reflect on what we are doing well, what is not going quite so well and how best to improve what we're doing, both by making changes to existing practices and trying completely new ones.

I guess I'm not the only one who has looked at Shelly's challenges each year and thought 'what a great idea - I really should get involved' and then done precisely nothing about it!!  So, why is it different this year?  Well, to be honest, this year was shaping up to be like all the others. I joined the 30 goals Facebook group  last week, fully intending to reflect on goal number one over the weekend and write a blogpost about it.  That didn't happen!  Instead, I spent the weekend doing a bit of writing, a few household chores and a lot of watching rubbish movies!!  

Then, this morning, came my 'light bulb' moment!!  I was checking my e-mails over breakfast, as is my wont, and clicked on Vicky Loras's  blogpost about the first goal of this year's challenge.  The first goal is:

Define your moment

Vicky Loras

Vicky had dedicated her post to Rose Bard and had written about how she had been inspired by her.  I was immediately reminded of how Vicky herself had inspired me when I was very new to Twitter and my PLN was made up of a mere handful of ELT professionals.  Fortunately for me, she was one of them!  I was living in Treviso at the time and on a train on my way into Venice to attend a seminar given by Michael Swan.  I tweeted about what I was doing, feeling a little foolish about it and wondering who would care.  Within seconds, Vicky had tweeted back, telling me what a fan she was of Michael and how she envied me my day with him. That contact inspired me to share what I learned that day, both through a series of tweets and a blogpost.  Since then, I haven't really looked back.  I've gone on to share conference and webinar experiences through posts and tweets and have built my PLN into the fantastic resource it is today.  I'm happy to say that Vicky is still a part of that - perhaps we'll even get to meet in person one day!

So, thanks to Vicky, I'm on board with this year's 30 goals challenge.  I've answered Shelly's challenge to define my moment on a wall she's created on Padlet.  I reproduce it here:

Andrea Wade

(@worldteacher)

This is my moment to be inspired by all of the amazing educators from around the globe I come into contact with and to try to give something back by inspiring others.

#MyMoment #30GoalsEdu