24 Ways for Schools and Educators to TWEET

I'm leading a session at our district PD day on Twitter, so I made up a "bingo" for the attendees to play on their own as they explore their own tweeting identity.

Which is your favorite?

Kids > Your Professional Learning or Goals

As we wrap up professional development plan season in teacher-land, let us remember that it's the little things we do as PEOPLE that make all the difference to the children in our care. 

Just because I have a passion for X doesn't mean that doing X is going to advance my skill and proficiency at helping students do Y. X might look good on a resume, and be good for career advancement to adminstration, but making hard decisions that make the adults in our schools uncomfortable often are the most student-friendly. 

As a couple examples...

If you are hyper-focised on classroom management and eliminating distractions, you might target locking-up student devices as a strategy to ensure attention and engagement.  We give up a lot of control when we allow students the freedom to use their electronic devices as they choose in the hallway or commons, but we trade it some for more convenient opportunities for kids to complete school work or communicate with their teachers or classmates. You may end up coming looking like you don't have "control," but if you've coached your students in appropriate usage and times for usage, the KIDS are better off. 

 

It's certainly not sexy, and not usually effective in promoting and engaging higher-order thinking, but can you leave room in your professional planning that some days students might need a worksheet (with answers/solutions) to gain practice and feedback?

 My own goal on my professional development plan is related to engaging kids in vague, "ungoogle-able" questions that require them to find and sort through information and then choose from procedural skills to apply in their problem-solving process. I'm really excited about this goal, and in the long term its best for kids to have these skills, but I know some days I'm going to need to step back and give more support than I really want to or think they need. In the Disney version of your classroom, kids always respond well to your efforts and initiatives, and always appreciate higher standards for learning. That often happens in reality, but there are also those kids with those days that need a relationship more  than they need rigor. 

Our goals can sometimes stand in opposition to students' legitimate will to learn - on those days its important to remember that my relationship with a student endures in my legacy far longer than the lesson for the week.

My Syllabus, in Emojis

One of the most basic rules of writing is to use only as many words as you must, and I think this especially holds true for syllabi. The denser they are, I imagine the less they get read, right? 

There's a cute version that my son's teacher gave him tonight that involved lots of tabs and you can download and edit for yourself here: Mrs. D's Editable Parent Handbook Flapbook. (You may have already had your first day of school, but maybe you could wow all of your friends with this flapbook next open house or parent-teacher conference night?)

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about flapbooks, because while I think they are good for notes in class, they aren't so much my thing for simply conveying information. 

This idea was borne today when a colleague of mine was trying to think about how to be represent the Teach Like a Champion strategy "100%". You figure you want some imagery that the students would really internalize, right? Thinking through how much our students communicate solely through emojis on Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter, I knew that the "100" emoji was just what she needed.

But why stop there? 

My syllabus in emoji - 📧📞📱📚📒✏📆📈🎨⏰🆔💯🌟🔁🔨💭❓- Can you get them all? #moedchat

— Chuck Baker (@chuckcbaker) August 13, 2015

Tomorrow's syllabus will be supplemented with text as needed, but I mostly want my students to remember my procedures and expectations through emoji this year. 

Can you guess what each one represents?