Once In A Lifetime, Part II

In October 2010 I waited 25 minutes for my 3 year-old HP to boot up. The first thing I did was see if Best Buy had any MacBook Pros in stock. They did, and two hours later I had my first MacBook Pro.

I fell in love, and started using it in my classroom.

Six months later, I stopped by my principal’s office for something random and as I was ready to walk away, he asked if I’d be interested in joining a contingent of people from my district who were heading to Cupertino, California…to Apple Headquarters.

The whole trip was a blur, and at nearly every stage of the trip–in the airports, on the planes, in the Executive Business Center at Apple, in the hotel room with a balcony–all I could think of was the Talking Heads song, “Once In A Lifetime.”

“You may find yourself in another part of the world…you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

I felt like I didn’t belong. No one really made me feel that way, but I’d look around the room of pretty much everyone outranking me and think, “how did I get here?”

A year later our district made the transition from HP to Apple by issuing MacBooks Pros to each teacher.

I was part of a group of 20 amazing educators from across the district who received additional training for the MacBook Pro and eventually, the iPad.

And now Monday, I will start using a classroom set of iPads with my AP Language and Composition class. Eventually my Pop Culture classes and my English 11 class will also use them, but I’m starting small. And I’m not alone–my friend Mrs. Carlson is on the same journey, and we have fantastic district support.

It’s Friday afternoon, the last day of break, and I’m sitting in my classroom with four iPads remaining to load apps. I’m thinking of what I’m going to do this upcoming semester. I’m excited and terrified, and I’m still thinking, “how did I get here?”

I’ll be blogging about it here in the next 18 weeks–about all of it. The good, bad and ugly. I’m not sure I’ll ever really know how I got here, but I’m sure I’ll be glad I did.