In an effort to keep the number of unread messages in my inbox to a manageable level, I am going to be doing these posts more often - since I seem to find about a dozen interesting things on Twitter every day.
This is exactly what I need: 10 Questions to Help you Become a Better Teacher this School Year.
#10 is my favorite - what's my focus? This gets back - again - to my 'way.' That, of course, is Simon Sinek's concept. It's my cause, my belief, my mantra: help students find their elements and help them to become linchpins. I approach every class that way.
****
Speaking of helping kids find their elements and become linchpins! I love what this metropolitan school principal did. Add more security? More cameras? More guns?
Nope.
He eliminated it all. And took all that money and invested it in the arts.
And what results!
****
This is the opening paragraph of this post - The Perils of Being a Social Media Holdout.
And it is intended for businesses, but it can easily apply to teachers too.
There are conversations taking place about your company or brand 24 hours a day, seven days a week in social media. Are you a part of these conversations? Or are you hoping that if you don't hear them, they don't exist?
And it is intended for businesses, but it can easily apply to teachers too.
Students Tweet and text and Facebook and Snapchat about you. That's inevitable. Your part of their lives. Like it or not. The only thing you can control is whether they're going to spread positive or negative things about you via social media.
I always tell teachers who shy away from social media that the world sees all the negative stuff that goes on in classrooms (just go to youtube and check out bad teacher or angry teacher or bad teaching and see what comes up). So why not show the world all the awesome stuff you do.
When a lesson is going great, have your kids take out their phones or iPads or iPods and document it. Then push it out to social media. Or do that yourself. Have a designated 'live Tweeter' for every class period. Or at least someone you trust to document some of the learning that goes in in the classroom.
I love this point that the article makes - If you don't tell your story, others will tell it for you.
So show the world all the great things that go on it your room. That way when new students walk in, they know they're going to be blown away by the things you do. That is far better than having them walk in having no idea what to expect - or worse- knowing all too well just what they're going to get - lecture, notes, questions at the end of the story, and power points that are read verbatim.
That stuff sucks.
*****
And the other side of the coin -
But what's great about technology (Google Docs and texting) is that many of our introverts in class have greater avenues to connect with us. They don't necessarily have to get out of their comfort zones to have an impact anymore.
*****
I just heard on an EntreLeadership podcast - referencing the book The Millionaire Mindset by Thomas Stanley that the average GPA of "deca-millionaires" was 2.75!
This - I think - drives home the point that sometimes our greatest innovators and entrepeneurs aren't adept at "doing school."(check out the great book by Denise Clark Pope of that same title - it's on our professional library) It's not that they're not bright. I just think they don't see the merit in jumping through the hoops of school.
It would be very interesting to follow some of our 'great' students - with their lofty 4.0 GPAs (and by that I mean the ones who learn to"do school" which means not to really learn but to study hard the night before to do well on a test to earn the grade without really learning anything - as Don Tapscott said when studying college students "The goal is to get an A without ever having gone to a lecture") to see how they fair out in the real world -
Here are 10 top entrepreneurs who explain how to be awesome.
My favorite is Steve Jobs' advice: Be willing to fail.
How often do we allow our students to do that?
****
Here is one of my favorite TED Talks from this link, 9 of the coolest educational videos from TED.
****
And this one is awesome, if just for the title alone:
The Best 1:1 Device is a Good Teacher
I don't think technology can - poof - turn average or poor teachers into rock stars. It can, I hope, engage students better which, again, I hope, will cause average or poor teachers to improve.
But nothing beats a good teacher.
No comments:
Post a Comment