Overcoming Perfection Paralysis – Time To Start Sharing

Press Start! Image by Wesley Lelieveld via Flickr http://flic.kr/p/dQ3D7H used under CC license

I’ve heard it said that the retention rate of information after attending a conference is roughly 5-10%. So if 20 key points are presented, you walk away remembering only one or two that really resonate with you. After a recent teacher librarian conference, the following key point resonated the loudest with me:

Perfection Paralysis

It was Lyn Hay, lecturer at the School of Information Studies at Charles Sturt University, who asked an auditorium full of teacher librarians if perfectionism was keeping them from documenting and sharing what they were doing in their classrooms. For me the answer was an unfortunate ‘yes’. I’d thought many times about documenting my TL journey, but perfection paralysis had set in. This time, however, I left the conference with renewed determination:

I will start that blog!

And here it is. I’m hoping it will serve many functions, but in particular the following:

1. To document the many and varied teaching and learning initiatives my role as teacher librarian calls me to
2. To share teaching and learning experiences, both successful and not-so-successful
3. To reflect on my professional practice
4. To seek comment and input from teachers and other educational experts

So perfection be damned! Learning is seldom a smooth and shiny process. Let the journey begin – warts and all. As Lyn Hay so bluntly put it: ‘Just do it.’

I’d love to hear from other new bloggers, TLs or otherwise. What happened after you hit the ‘publish’ button that you might want to share?