As a birthday gift to me (though he didn’t know it was my birthday) Geoff Le Pard, who blogs about the Universe and whatever occurs to him at TanGental, nominated me for the Very Inspiring Blogger Award.

Needless to say I was both surprised and delighted. I could say that I aspire to inspire, but I think even that would be a great exaggeration.

 

In his post Geoff provides three reasons for selecting me:

• I see life through a prism
• I have a firmly fixed moral compass, and
• He wishes I’d taught him at school!!!!!

The first two I am not sure about, but I am definitely honoured by the third. Thank you Geoff. I will endeavour to attain this high bar you have set.

The rules for accepting this award are:

1. Thank and link to the amazing person(s) who nominated you.

2. List the rules and display the award.
3. Share seven facts about yourself.
4. Nominate 15 other amazing blogs and comment on their posts to let them know they have been nominated.
5. Optional: Proudly display the award logo on your blog and follow the blogger who nominated you.

 

Thank you, Geoff. I am honoured.

These are seven things about me:

1. I am passionate about education and the power that education has for transforming lives. I believe that everyone has a right to an education. I have spent all of my adult life involved in education in some way; and most of my childhood was spent in school!

2. I am the third of ten children. What that tells you about me I’m not sure, but I believe we are more than the product of our birth order and environment; that each of us has the power to make choices about how we want to live our lives. I’m not saying environment and genetics don’t play a large role in who we are, but I am saying they do not determine everything.

3. I have two adult children of whom I am extremely proud and who I love very much. They are what is important in my life. They each have a wonderful partner who I also love, and my son has two beautiful children who I adore. My family gives me an enormous amount of pleasure. I am very fortunate to have all of them living close to me.

4. I enjoy playing games, especially word games like Scrabble, Upwords and Balderdash. I especially enjoy playing them with my family. We often spent days playing games together when the children were growing, and had grown, up. We’re having a bit of a rest now that the grandchildren are small and doing the entertaining. I’m sure we’ll have three generations playing together again soon. We collaboratively do the ‘Big Quiz’ (40 trivia questions) in the local paper when we get together on Sundays, hoping that someone in the family may know the answer. None of us fair too well on the sporting questions!

5. I have a silly sense of humour. I enjoy word plays and puns and alternate meanings for words and sayings. In my head I finish words and statements with ridiculous things before the person speaking has even time to finish them. I laugh uncontrollably at something I think is funny, like this silly senior’s password email that arrived in my inbox this week:

6. I think life is short and should be fun. We don’t know how much time we have so we should enjoy what we’ve got. This doesn’t mean we have to be out partying and playing all the time. It means we need to focus on enjoying what we are doing in the present moment, no matter how unpleasant it may be. It also means making choices and accepting responsibility for the choices we make.

7. I love learning. Learning gives so much joy. There is too much to learn in one life time, and it is scary now that the road ahead is considerably shorter than the one already travelled. I hope that in my days of teaching I have inspired in children a love of and joy in learning that they will carry with them throughout their life travels.

Nominating 15 other amazing bloggers is the hard part. Not because there are not 15 amazing and inspiring bloggers, but because I have nominated many before for a Butterfly Award, a Versatile Blogger Award and a Liebster Award. Not only that Geoff has nominated many of these same bloggers for this award, and Charli Mills has nominated them also.

We have a wonderful community of very supportive and encouraging bloggers. We each write our own blogs about our own interests, explaining our ideas and points of view. We read and comment on each other posts sharing points of convergence and divergence, and often adding further insights.

Rather than re-nominate bloggers I have nominated before (and be assured that you are all very deserving of this award and if you wish to add the Inspiring Blogger’s badge to your blog I am happy for you to do so) – over the next few weeks I am going to do a little more exploring to seek out other inspiring bloggers to add to our growing community.

A big thank you, to each and every one of you, for encouraging and supporting me on my blogging journey. Having your company is what makes it all worthwhile!

I appreciate your feedback. Please share your thoughts on any aspect of this article.

 

Previous nominees:

Liebster Award

Belinda Pollard of Small Blue Dog Publishing (Australia)

NANNY SHECANDO (Australia)

Anne Goodwin (UK)

Caroline Lodge (UK)

PS Cottier (Australia)

Teachling (Australia)

Peter Worley’s philosophy foundation (UK)

Michelle Sowey at The Philosophy Club(Australia).

There’s No Food ( Australia)

Obscure Pieces (Australia)

Cultivating Questioners (USA)

Nillu Nasser Stelter (UK)

Charli Mills Carrot Ranch Communications (USA)

 

Versatile Bloggers

Ailish Sinclair

Teagan Kearney

Karen Wyld

Vicki Addesso

Susan Buchanan

Paula Reed Nancarrow

Lisa Reiter

Lori Schafer

Karen Oberlaender

Diane Mott

Greg Mischio

Anne Goodwin

Caroline Lodge

Charli Mills

NannySheCanDo

 

Butterfly Award

Ruth Mancini

The Nerdy Book Club

Two Writing Teachers

Raising a literate human