Image by Scott Maxwell.
Do you remember your first day in the classroom? I remembered mine as I read a recent article about a new teacher, just out of college, who was struggling with the huge task of understanding her new job. Her experience sounded so familiar. Walk into the school. Get handed a key to the classroom. Find your mailbox. Get a stack of textbooks. Yikes! What next?
That was the dilemma of the teacher in the article: what next? After feeling totally overwhelmed, this teacher turned to the Internet and used a social networking tool to seek help. She posted the simple question, “I’m new, what do I do now?” In a matter of hours she received sixty responses to this plea for help. She even had experts come to her aid.
Talk about curriculum building! Teachers today seem more willing to assist and collaborate with their peers than ever before. Social networking sites seem to offer a non-threatening forum where teachers can share and exchange their ideas.
As I remember that exciting yet scary feeling as I walked into my classroom for the first time, I wonder why, if social networking tools are so easily accessible to us, we aren’t sharing more? Why do so many teachers still struggle alone with more and more paperwork? More and more papers to grade? More and more expectations? Couldn’t social networking sites provide the avenue for educators to share how they have solved problems? Organized the mountain of assignments to grade? Managed high expectations? Dealt with thorny questions on curriculum?
So I now ask you: “To share or not to share?” What’s your experience with social networking to assist you with your work?
Tags: PLC
Ice-Breaker Cell Phones
My first experience in the classroom dealt with trying to find fun ice-breakers which usually included name and rank games, pretty boring. When my son was hired to teach his first College Freshman Communication Class, I was quick to give him my seasoned advice on how to make students comfortable by playing ice-breaker games. To his credit, he took my advice but to a whole new level. His ice-breaker had his students share the ring-tone on their cell phones. It was a huge success!! Welcome to the world of digital brains.
Panic stricken and no where to turn. So many new teachers are faced with this dilemma on a daily basis. They would like to seek out help but fear that their colleagues may think less of them. Social networking could be the answer to a lot of concerns for the novice teacher. Teachers could seek out information and gain responses from highly experienced people from all areas of the world. We as experienced teachers need to step up and make ourselves available to help out our fellow colleagues. Hopefully, someday we will see a social networking website devoted completely to teachers. Keep your eyes open.
I’m a Facebook junkie, but never thought about how social networking could actually benefit me at work. After reading this, I can think of several ways that social networking could be used by teachers and administrators. We currently have a professional book club that meets each week to discuss the reading, but we could actually blog our responses and comments instead. Teachers could post questions about classroom management issues or teaching the curriculum and other teachers in the building could post responses. This might be a little less threatening than actually asking for help. As principal, I could post questions about professional development needs and get feedback from teachers. I may actually become a networking junkie at work now too! Does anyone have any suggestions for getting started?
Don’t need no education? Just another brick in the wall? Those Pink Floyd lyrics call us to task. Is our responsibility to build walls to protect our students or to tear them down to help prepare them for the future they will face? Students are one group, but what about educators. What is our responsibility to take part in the world our students will face? Educators can use social networking to work smarter and not harder. Want a real life example? Look how Twitter saved one such teacher in “Pedagogical Serendipity (or, how Twitter saved my Kindergarten lesson).”
Thanks Tena for sharing the article, “Pedagogical Serendipity (or, how Twitter saved my Kindergarten lesson).” It is an excellent example of how even the youngest students can use technology to be engaged in 21st Century Learning. I plan to use this as an example (this week in fact!) when talking about what is 21st Century Learning to a group of superintendents. Again, thanks for sharing the example.