The Power of Teachers' Collective Voices

Image by HowardLake

This semester I'm taking a class on advocacy and it is expanding my understanding of what advocacy entails. I am learning that being an advocate has many features to it. An advocate is more than someone who speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves. Advocates:

• build relationships with others
• plead the cause on behalf of others and are persuasive
• give information to educators, legislators, elected officials, and decision-makers with the hope of influencing them to join their cause
• identify problems that need to be addressed, contact legislators, and encourage them to guide the bill through the legislative process

How powerful is that! As educators, our collective voice has the power to set change in motion. So many educators have powerful stories that our government officials need to hear. Who is a better expert on student learning than those who facilitate that learning everyday?

I am passionate about student access to technology. Not technology for technology sake but the appropriate and meaningful use of technology to support connected, hands-on, student-centered learning. I am passionate about making the four walls of the classroom invisible and allowing students to teach and learn from students & teachers all over the world. It has nothing to do with competing with children from other countries but equipping ALL students with the necessary tools to do their best work everyday and evolve as learners.

Share the same passion? What are some ways that you can get involved?

1. Find out who your elected officials are. Two resources to help you do that are www.Senate.gov and www.house.gov.
2. Email in support of educational technology at http://www.edtechactionnetwork.org/
3. Join your local ed tech organization to find out what they're doing at the state level
4. Browse ISTE's advocacy resources including their templates and starter kits and share them with your teachers, staff, and administrators

In the comments section, share what you're passionate about and how you plan to advocate for your students in 2013.

The Importance of Instructional Goals

Image by Ryan Thackray

This week my class and I have been discussing instructional goals and whether it is necessary for teachers to have them. I think that they should. Having clear goals gives a teacher a destination to reach; they have a specific result that they are trying to achieve. With that goal in mind, teachers are better able to select activities, assessments and materials that support that goal. Without, it is easy to lose track or focus on content that, although it’s interesting, does not support their ultimate outcome. It is from that goal that teachers can create assessments (formal or informal) that measure if the goal has been achieved. Creating assessments will also be easier because the teacher would know what skills they want the student to acquire by the end of the lesson or unit. Having goals in the classroom does not mean they are rigid guidelines that are strictly adhered to but they can give teachers a clearer idea of the direction the class is heading.

My Learning, My Style

Last week I took a learning style inventory to assess what my top learning styles were. Here were my results:

I have taken a few learning style assessments before so I wasn't surprised to see that my highest was intrapersonal because I am one who likes to reflect on experiences, set goals, and connect my prior learning to new situations. My second highest, linguistic, also made sense because I was an English major in college and I always had a love for how words communicate ideas, give things meaning, creates connections, and tell stories. The one high scoring that surprised me was the interpersonal. This was surprising to me because I tend to lean more toward being introverted. I was unsure how it had risen so much since the last time I had taken an assessment like this. But then I realized that over the course of building my PLN, that I had started to become a connected educator. Over the last two years, I have seen the value of learning with, learning from, and connecting to other educators instead of learning on my own. Through my collaborations with other educators, my need to learn in the context of community grew.

While discussing the outcomes of our learning styles as a class, one of my classmates mentioned that she noticed that she taught her students the most from her learning style. This reminded me of a conversation that I had with a professor in which she told me that many educators teach from their learning style because that is how they feel the most comfortable but it could alienate other students that are not strong in that learning style. As I reflected on my own learning, I realized that a lot of my teaching centers around reflection and writing, which serves my linguistic and intrapersonal students well but there is little instruction that targets naturalistic, musical, and visual-spatial students, which I scored low in. So what does all of this meaning for my teaching? That I need to step out of my comfort zone and remember that within a classroom, there are students that come with a variety of learning styles and I need to make sure that their learning styles are represented in my instruction.

Letting Students Fail

Photo by John Liu 

At the ISTE conference in June, Chris Tully presented on the motivated and engaged classroom. He said that as teachers we need to "let students learn by failing." The idea of allowing my students to fail made me very uncomfortable. I had always believed that the mission of education was to help students succeed and to me that meant preventing failure at all costs. As a teacher, it is hard for me to watch my students fail especially when my intervention could prevent that failure. Since that day I have been wrestling with how helpful is "too helpful." I began to wonder if my continual need to step in was helping my students or ultimately hurting them. As I wrestled with the idea of allowing students to fail, I reflected on my own experience as a learner. Many of the things that I struggled with the most were the ones that I worked the hardest at and learned the most from.

In his blog post on resisting being helpful, Dan Rockwell suggests that there are benefits to failure:
         1. Struggle strengthens.
         2. Failure humbles.
         3. Defeat opens hearts and minds.

What I had failed to realize is that failure can teach students just as much (if not more) as success. What brought me a moment of clarity is when Rockwell states: "The simple question is, 'Will pulling back [or stepping in] aid development?'" At the end of the day, what I want is to aid in my students' cognitive, academic, and social development. There will be times when stepping in will be the way to go and times when stepping back would be better. 

What are your thoughts on allowing students to fail?

Week in Review

News
The impact of digital learning on achievement
Strategies for engaging parents
7 habits of tech-leading principals
Digital learning leads to deeper thinking
GlogsterEDU will be included in the Google Chromebook
Mirroring on a Mac without an iPad
50 k-12 edtech blogs to read
The value of digital writing
2012 K-12 Horizon report on emerging technology
New updates announced by Apple


Tools & Apps
Curate the web using eduClipper
Learn about apps for summer learning
New tools teachers can use in the classroom
Interactive science activities at Wonderville
Tools for creating sharing communities


Technology Integration
QR codes for school communication
Using technology to engage students over the summer
Using the Apple TV in the classroom e-book


Professional Development Opportunities
Professional Development and resources for teaching online from Edutopia
Apply for the next Google Teacher Academy in New York (October 3-4)
Digital Teacher series at The Center for Learning
ISTE Conference in San Diego, CA (June 24-27) or attend remotely
Engaging parents webinar (June 21)

A Year of Improvement

I was inspired by Mary Beth Hertz's blog post  reflecting on the five things she improved on this year so I decided to do the same:

1. Putting myself out there. I got the idea to start blogging over a year and a half ago but I was too scared to do it. Once I started blogging for my class I realized I could use it as a starting point or let yet another year pass by wishing I could. I decided to take a chance and in the process I'm finding my voice.
2. Reflecting on my classroom management. I always thought I knew how to handle kids but working with kids this year proved to be a bit of a challenge and some of the techniques I used to rely on weren't working. So I started asking myself "What could I have done better in this situation?"Answering this question made me take an honest look at what I was doing well and what needed improvement. Once I started doing that, it was easier working with kids and I experienced less frustration. 
3. Saying thank you. The last year I've been lucky to have so many people invest in my learning and development. In response to the flood of support and encouragement I started thanking everyone for the little (and big) things they do for me that will make me a better educator. 
4. Finding creative ways to learn. For the longest time my only source of learning was through reading books. While I'm still an avid reader I've learned that there are a ton more ways to learn new things. I've found resources through other people's blogs, Twitter posts and other's lists on Diigo. And because of creative learning I've learned more than I ever have.
5. Sharing what I've learned. Someone once said not to die with your ideas inside of you. To that end, I started telling friends, coworkers and members of my personal learning community about tools I've started using, why I value Facebook and Twitter and what I'm reading. The response has been that I've given people ideas they didn't think of and a fresh perspective.

This year has been such an amazing time of learning and growing and I can't wait to see what the next year holds.