Monday, March 18, 2013

Immersing Myself in Social Media Feels Like Rush Hour 24/7. Can you help me steer the way?


Destination: Making school an engaging, caring and compassionate place
Objective: Seeking a better social media route

Using social media as a professional development guide to improve education will most certainly yield positive results throughout my school community; especially once more FHS drivers enter the road. I initiated my journey about 9 months ago. I still feel I am utilizing social media more so for myself professionally than for my community. Social media has helped to expand my educational philosophy; has helped me connect ideas to movements and clarify some of my misconceptions. I do share what I learn with others via social media, through personal conversations and through traditional email, however, at the moment I have no idea what the impact on the community has been. Don’t get me wrong; social media has led some colleagues to move in a particular direction.  We have participated in a few school wide projects and divisional projects as a result of what we have been exposed to and learned through social media; we have many teachers reading and writing blogs, and some students are blogging and publishing iBooks, as well. There is also a pretty large group of us that “carpool together” frequently, exchanging ideas and looking for ways to implement them in our school. I know the road toward change is a long one, and that is OK, as long as we keep moving forward.
Let’s get back to rush hour and at this point I am driving on my own, but seeking some advice to make my own professional journey a bit more efficient. I think many of us out there are constantly looking for better traffic patterns or alternate routes. I bury and overwhelm myself with so much information that I tend to skim the surface by reviewing all paths, instead of taking a pit stop or considering a detour. The traffic patterns I have explored are Google reader for my blogs, TweetDeck for my tweets, and delicious to park my favorites, and I use Flipboard as the suitcase for all my apps while on the go. However, I still would appreciate some advice from those experienced drivers, map developers or analysts who could help me reach my destination.

It’s spring break, I am set to refuel, can you help me steer the way? What do you use to navigate, explore fully, park your information, and make rush hour a pleasant experience?

Thanks in advance for helping me refuel. 

Sunday, March 17, 2013

Learning and Changing through the Eyes of Specialist Teachers


This past Friday, a group of specialist area teachers (representing art, library, music, PE, science, spanish and technology) and I stumbled upon some open time to get together and talk about educational change, learning, and the impact “talk of change” has on our professional lives. To stimulate conversation I sent them 3 groups of bundled Ted Talks: 
1)  21st Century K-12 learning from Jonathan Martin http://21k12blog.net/2012/08/11/18-videos-suggested-for-back-to-school-faculty-meetings-and-other-educational-audiences2) reimaging your business from Harvard Business ReviewBlog http://t.co/wQdMJ7rPUA
3) learning from failure http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/03/8-wonderful-ted-talks-on-learning-from.html
It was nice to see that from the 12 of us present, we picked from all 3 bundles. The questions I posed were the following:
   What surprised, worried or excited you about the topic?   How does it relate to our work as educators?   How does it relate to our work specifically at our JK-12 school?
I framed the conversation around our “learning” both from one another and from the resources beyond our school walls. It was an open, un-hurried conversation, where everyone was engaged and left with a positive outlook toward making school better. Some highlights:
FROM THE GROUP:·            We need to develop stronger partnerships that help those who we  receive or send our students to (parents and colleges) understand our vision as a school and the importance we are giving to authentic, real world, skills based education.
·            The school vision should be communicated consistently, thoroughly and across constituents.
·            Break the equation: College = good letter grades + excellent test scores + traditional leadership.
·            How does our college counseling office explain our school? Following a traditional mode or by explaining our uniqueness and forward thinking pedagogy. How should our school be represented to colleges? Can our college counseling office share these thoughts with the JK-12th grade faculty?·            As a group we value the need to learn from our failures; we grow from reflecting on our mistakes; how do we reinforce this with our parent body?
·            The admissions team should be a voice for our teaching and learning; we want them in our spaces!·            Creativity, play and downtime for students is essential. We must do the best we can to build it into our lessons and programs. This requires flexibility from all.·            We respect, recognize and need organization and structure in our school lives and programs; but we also want more spontaneity and opportunities for creative endeavors in our specialist areas. We strive to find this balance although we are unsure of how to achieve it.
·            We value the resources and global connections we use through Web 2.0 tools, but we believe in the importance of human connections and relationships in our learning.

VALUABLE FEEDBACK I RECEIVED ON WHAT SPECIALIST TEACHERS NEED TO ENHANCE THEIR TEACHING:·            Ability to plan and execute without stepping through so many hoops!·            Freedom to diversify, augment and rethink our programs.·            Don’t over plan and over schedule.·            Provide flexibility  of time when needed.·            Trust us as experts in our field.·            Understand that collaboration happens naturally among us when needed yielding effective results (examples came up in the conversation!)

THE SPECIALIST TEACHERS NOTED THE FOLLOW NEEDS AS MOST IMPORTANT TO THEIR PROFESSIONAL LEARNING:·            More open ended, unconferencing opportunities to work together.·            Time for dialog.·            School commitment toward reflection – allowing time for dialog and other reflection strategies.
·            Slow down, don’t rush (us or the kids!)

Thank you for your time and commitment colleagues – I truly appreciate it!