I try to play it safe online, especially where Twitter and my Hub are concerned. Not too many pictures of my students' faces. Not too much information about my family and home life. Focus on the professional, the intellectual, the academic. I don't let people in my PLN see much into my personal world. That wasn't always the case. I was the classic extrovert - outgoing, very social, and re-energized by getting together with a big group of people. I loved hosting gatherings at my house - the more crowded the better! My husband's cancer diagnosis in November of 2012 changed all of that; we have two little girls and my focus instantly shifted from my external world to my very private internal world that I grabbed on to and refused to let go.
This is a big risk, here, putting in writing how it came to be that I am no longer the extrovert I was. But I believe that in as much as it is risky for me to share and put myself out there, it is what we ask our students to do every day. We ask them to make connections, to write memoirs, to relate a reading to something that happened to them, to keep journals, to share their cultures. We reassure them that they will be safe, that they can trust us, that it will be okay. That they will be better for it. Let me now do the same.
Click here to go to my poem 'Catalyst' on Genius.