Gentle People in San Fran and Out
I really can’t think of anything about the trip to San Francisco that has been bad. Somethings have been a little disappointment, but you know, did I really expect that I’d have free massage services at my hotel? Meetings on Thursday, parties; sessions this morning, chairing and responding to a brilliant and wonderful session with Trav Webster and Matt Cox (whom I would steal away from Michigan State in a hot second!); a meeting to put together a book proposal; and now for lunch before meetings in the afternoon and the ISU party tonight at 5:00. Full days, good days. Oh the wonderful, gentle folks I’ve met (and reconnected with) in San Francisco!
Last night, though, I got an email from my friend Paul about another friend of ours, Betty Collum, from Mississippi. Better, I learned, passed away yesterday after a brief battle with a brain tumor. I’m unbelievably shocked and saddened by Betty’s passing. I first met Betty, an energetic and smart elementary school teacher, when she attended the Tech Matters Institute at Marshall that I was helping to facilitate. Betty would be the first person to tell you, in her long and hcarming Mississippi drawl, that she was not the most techno-literate person you’d meet. I found every single one of her questions and confusions charming. She was one of those great teachers who did not let her many years in the profession prevent her from thinking expansively about new things, new teaching strategies, new projects, new technologies. She wasn’t always sure where’d she take things, but she say right there and tried to learn Flash coding.
Last summer, we met again briefly in Nebraska to process the 5 or so years of the Tech Matters Institutes (she went on in later years to joing the planning and implementation team for the institute). Betty would downplay her intelligence and then wow you with a smart comment that showed that while she might not be a “digital native” she was certainly not dumb. No wonder she won the 2009 Pat Mitchell Award!
Learning of her passing last night made me rather sad, thinking of a bright light and brilliant teacher with an expansive knowledge and understanding of how to make writing matter in young peoples lives. Betty will be missed, I know, by so many of us in the National Writing Project.
