  like I've talked a lot on this blog about how important finding that balance is between your professional life and your "other" life; aka your "personal" life. I tend to call it that "other" life because sometimes the line becomes just so fuzzy, it's not even a line between a work and personal life so we need to find some "other" parts to fulfill us. Sometimes, people find so much fulfillment in their jobs, they have difficulty leaving or admitting that it has crossed the line and has become a part of their personal life because they enjoy it so much. Yesterday morning, many of us found ourselves in that situation. We attended an event called #EdCampLI where we have found such a close connection with other educators, that it is hard to call that part of the "work:" part of life. How is that not listed under "personal" if I attended the wonderful 5th session where we sat around at On the Border and had drinks talking about all sorts of personal and fulfilling things with people like Audra Beberman (@AudraB_EdTech), Alison McDermott (@ALibrarian3), JoEllen McCarthy (@JoEllenMcCarthy) and more than I can list who we find understand us in ways that some of our friends who have known us for decades just....well.... don't? As I said, the line can get fuzzy between a personal life and a work life when you love what you do. Let's go back in time to earlier sessions in the day. Talking about that 5th session may be getting a little ahead of myself. In the first session, I actually explained how to use @PearDeck to make interactive lectures from PowerPoints and to take it a step further by using Office Mix to put those same interactive lectures on your website for absent students or students who need to watch the lectures multiple times. It was the first time I ran a session like this for teachers at an unconference but it was met with acceptance and just an amazing audience of teachers (surprisingly to me a packed house). During the 2nd session, I got to listen to Joe Sapienza E.d.D. from Jericho School District (@JSapK12) talk about mindfulness as an educator. As a daily yoga practitioner for too many years than I care to admit to say that I have been practicing (I am a woman after all and I don't want to age myself), mindfulness is one of those things that just comes with the territory. I am just a huge fan a monotasking which is one of the ideas he brought up in his session, and in a world of multitasking sometimes I feel a bit alone. However, this session felt like great justification to my way of being. I always feel like if I do more than one thing at a time, I just don't do any of them well! Here is where we had lunch....... who doesn't love lunch and getting to chat about what you've gotten to learn so far?
The official last session of the day (I say official because I already mention the fun 5th session), I went to an awesome talk about balancing work and personal life with Don Gately E.d.D. of Jericho Schools and Danielle Gately E.d.D. of East Williston Schools (@dmgately). They were perfect to run this session because as married administrators in different school districts, they have had to learn this balancing act; and it is one that is never perfected. This is the balancing act that I will constantly be referring to in this blog because I find it to be so important to professionals in this industry. If we aren't taking care of ourselves how are we going to help to support our students, the parents, and the communities that rely on us?
#EdCamp is an amazing movement of connected educators whose line between personal and professional is fuzzy and they like it that way! If you find that you love your job as an educator, that you love to keep learning, that you love to meet others like you; you are probably one of us and you should find an #EdCamp community near you!
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