My IDEA File OR "My Job has become my hobby, my hobby has become my job"

In my spare time I write lesson plans and read academic texts about educational theory and practice. You know, for fun.

There are two reasons why this is somewhat ironic:

1) When I was in grad school and teaching full time, I dreaded both lesson planning AND academic reading.

2) -Even more amusing- I used to spent much of my free time crafting and chit chatting with friend and family about their craft projects. Now I work at a Michaels craft supply and have very little time after work for my old pursuits. Instead of staying up late working on quilts or beading, I outline courses and read about educational theory.

My job has become my hobby and my hobby has become my job.

I have a word file on my laptop entitled IDEAS. When I worked at an office job, I started to jot down little things that I didn't want to forget. I knew I'd get back into teaching and it was way for me to remember thoughts that had occurred to me or things I wanted to try in the classroom. I started out just writing one and two sentence lines. When I substitute taught the next year, I would jot down things I saw other people do that I particularly liked ("Tennis balls on chair legs to reduce noise", "DOL- Daily Oral Language grammar exercises"), or specific things I wanted to avoid ("No electric pencil sharpeners ever!").

Occasionally, when I had time, I would outline a couple ideas, personal philosophies and values. They'd have bold underlined titles such as: "Main theme for any English class- learn to communicate well!", "As an activity in character recognition/ analyzation...", or just "Classroom management". Eventually, specific classes, personal projects and research topics started to filter their way in, such as "ESSAY TOPIC: School; Paradise or Prison? Questions about the history, philosophies, and controversies in the American Public School System ", “Literacy Across the Curriculum/ ‘Active’ Free Choice Reading” (Find a sexier title) for 7^th, 8^th or 9th grade^" , and “How did we get here? Why are the current issues of the day issues to begin with? (History-11th or 12th Grade Elective?)".

The other night, for example, a took a heading and idea I'd jotted down in passing a couple months ago: "FUN GAME FOR LESSON PLANNING aka- I'm kind of a dork/ tool" for which I had quickly described a system where I would choose three state standards at random and see if I could write a lesson plan that encompassed them all. Tuesday night, I spent 2 hours outlining a full social networking/ community website based off this idea and expanding it into a 'Lesson Plan Slam'- i.e- competitive lesson plan writing.

I started a quilt in October. Maybe I should get back to it.....