Mike+Dronen+-+Stillwater

===Greetings one and all! First off, the important stuff:===


 * Favorite veggie**: brussel sprouts
 * Most embarrassing song on my ipod**: Walkin On Sunshine (with me singing)
 * What's in my car trunk**: pieces of my car that have fallen off, an old shirt that was that placed there as a new shirt, tool box, jumper cables, two camp chairs and a really big battery (hybrid) and remnants from a bale or two of hay.
 * Wife**: way more talented than me and definitely a better dancer
 * Offspring**: two creative, competitive, fully digitized middle schoolers
 * Critters**: two dogs, two rats, one cat, eight chickens and four turkeys (until November)
 * Next cool social app we haven't heard of yet**: [|nibipedia]
 * Five years from now**: I will have read [|War and Peace]
 * Color, sepia or black and white**: c o l o r

For me, the "magic, I get it" moment was complaining as a new teacher (unique for 1st year teachers) that my students (middle-schoolers) just needed a little more positive adult role modeling than just a handful of teachers could provide. Guru science teacher, Jim Bickel, says in his into-the-future-who-knows-if-it-would-even-work-way, "So Mike, why don't you start an email mentoring program." This is 1994...email? Huh? Three years later and with the help of some other great folks (collaboration, right?) 300 middle school Minneapolis Public School kids are emailing their mentors (one kid to one mentor) weekly at  [|Cargill] and it completely changes the students' engagement in their school work and our school efforts end up [|in an article] and on the [|front cover] of TIME.

As a science teacher, building-level tech coordinator, district tech project manager and now district tech coordinator, I still believe. I can [|hear the bell]. I currently work as the District Tech Coordinator in Stillwater, MN and have been here just over four years. More stories from here will follow as the PLP program unfolds in the weeks ahead >>> going on an [|adventure]...I'm all over that!

email: dronenm@stillwater.k12.mn.us ichat: mikedronen (mac.com) skype: mikedronen ning: mikedronen twitter: can you guess by now?