Last Week I Learned... Reheating Pizza, @gCouros

My kids only like their pizza without the cheese, but you cannot give then 'cheese-less'' pizza. Instead, you must buy a cheese pizza and then manually remove the cheese from the slice before providing it to them. My daughter started this and then my son followed suit. The problem with this is when reheating refrigerated or frozen pizza. The cheese does not separate from the crust and tomato sauce very well. I looked into a few articles about the best methods for reheating pizza. For me, "best" was defined as being as close to the original state of the pizza as it left the oven for the first time. Two articles suggested that reheating the pizza slice on a non-stick pan on the stovetop was the best - and they were right!

I've had a few brief chances to interact with an educator, author, and leader named George Couros over the past couple of months through appearances at various ed tech events across the country. He has written a book called "The Innovator's Mindset" (it's on my reading list - I'll write more about it once I have had a chance to give it a proper read).

Last week George wrote a blog post titled "How Far One Can Go" which resonated with me. About ten years ago, after I had finished my Master's degree and returning to working full time at a school in New York City, my boss and mentor, Bill Walsh, asked me to come up with three goals for the year. One of those goals was to become a more active sharer and participant in educational technology conversations (at the time it was mostly the New York City Independent School Technologists - NYCIST). Bill gave me all of the support necessary to practice this engagement - leave work early to attend NYCIST meetings, travel to conferences, and eventually to propose sessions for ed tech conferences. When I think to when I first attended conferences I used to be in awe of those who were sharing - who had the fancy 'presenter badge' - and even more so of those who got to give keynote addresses. While I am certainly proud of and satisfied with my experiences thus far - which I believe are the result of putting myself out there AND getting the support from school leaders - George's post has inspired me to do what I hope will be better work in 2016 by reminding me to hang on to that 'awe.'