Thank you, Silvia! #LangwitchesLegacy

I haven’t blogged or Twittered much during the pandemic. I’ve been so absorbed in my work and so annoyed with the new block editing system of WordPress, that I have really lapsed in “documenting my learning”.

Yes, that is what I think I am doing here. Why do I think this? -Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano! Some may also know her as Langwitches due to her amazing blog and website.

She was a person that I had never met face to face but stood larger than life in my view. We spoke through Skype, email, and What’s App, and every conversation left my head spinning and my heart recharged to engage in the courageous effort of challenging the definition of literacy and using media as a means to develop it. When I heard that she passed away, I felt great sadness and loss for all the conversations we will never have again. She was a truly remarkable person, a force to be reckoned with, and I was grateful that I got to know her on a professional level.

Through the book (A Guide to Documenting Learning), her blog, and our interactions, she shifted my views as to how I could see, not only education but the world. She had this passion for digital storytelling and always reminded me that educators needed to stay relevant with their technology skills in their pedagogical approaches. She also challenged my thinking of how teachers should document their professional learning as a part of our PLCs–not for the sake of teacher evaluations but for the sake of their professional growth.

She was such a passionate person. Gosh, so many of her ideas were ahead of the times. It feels like there will be so much opportunity to uplevel ourselves as educators post-pandemic and she would have been there, supporting the effort and likely to see more of her ideas put into action. My heart really aches to think Silvia will miss this.

Silvia, thank you. These sentences are just the tip of the iceberg and what an indelible mark you’ve left. It’s really so hard to communicate what an extraordinary person you were and how much I appreciated your ideas and humanity. I feel like I am a better person for knowing you. RIP, beautiful soul.