Our PIRATE PD

 

I read Dave Burgess's Teach Like a Pirate last August, shortly before the start of our school year, and I have been singing its praises ever since. I even wrote my first ever blog post about it! I've had one of my best years yet in the classroom, and I attribute the success of this year to a renewed passion for my students and my growing connections on social media.

In January I started participating in a Twitter Teacher Book Club (#TBookC) which reads one book each month and discusses it over the first three Thursdays of the month (9 PM EDT; this month's read is Deborah Schoeberlein's Mindful Teaching & Teaching Mindfulness). The insights, connections, and meaningful changes to my teaching through participating in this book club are too enormous to count!  After leading many professional development sessions for my colleagues this year both during our weekly collaboration time and through hosting voluntary Tech Tuesdays, I started thinking about how I could pull off a book study for our staff.

At our high school, it wouldn't be easy. I was thinking about starting this after spring break, in those busy weeks where we all feel the pressure of the end of the school year, the preparation for standardized testing, and the weather warming up enough we don't want to be cooped up in the building any longer than possible! Add to that the many teachers coaching spring sports and/or with their own children involved in playing spring sports and a school musical, and I knew we would be lacking on both motivation and time to complete a book study! I needed to get creative if I wanted this to happen!

First, I needed to motivate my fellow teachers to participate. Many of them had heard me talk about how much I LOVE the #tlap philosophy and how much reading it has motivated me to reclaim making teaching fun for me and my students, so they were pretty familiar with the idea. I also cleared offering Professional Growth Points for participation with my principal, but I knew many older teachers in my building with lifetime licenses would not be motivated by that offer. Fortunately, Dave Burgess was announced as the keynote speaker for the summer technology conference our district is co-hosting this year, which generated more enthusiasm. Add to that my principal's offer to buy the books for us, and I knew I could convince a crew to embark on this book study with me!

Next, I needed to address our varied commitments and hectic schedules. Adding a weekly meeting to everyone's schedule wouldn't work out, so we needed to be able to connect online and after hours. I decided on two formats to interact, Blogger and Twitter. Blogger is so user friendly, and I knew my colleagues would have little trouble commenting on an initial post and responding to each other. Twitter, however, was another story. Only one of the teachers who signd up was experienced at using Twitte rto chat and make connections, so I decided to offere a voluntary Tech Tuesday session to help teachers create accounts, lose the eggs, and practice tweeting in a safe, supportive environment. I also offered to host the chat right after school the first few times and offer teachers the chance for face-to-face support in my classroom. During the first chat, all but the experienced user came to my classroom; by our last chat, only three teachers cme to my room, and they could handle Twitter by themselves but felt more comfortable in my room, just in case!

To wrap our study, I asked Dave Burgess to Google Hangout with our group, which he kindly agreed to do (Thank you, Dave!)! My colleagues were so inspired and impressed with Dave's passion and enthusiasm that they ALL signed up to attend our July conference to hear him keynote the event!

Overall, I'm counting our first EVER voluntary book study a success! Teachers ended the school year on an uplifting, inspirational note and were excitedly discussing how to incorporate "hooks" into their lessons, bith in the last few weeks of school and for the next school yeartechnology conference will take place next week (July 21 #IntegratED), so I'm hoping the PIRATE energy will be rekindled just in time for our back-to-school planning! I look forward to discussing hooks and #tlap as the year begins and to collecting evidence of our group putting the PIRATE philosophy in action, connecting with each other and our students as we make a difference! I'm hoping to lead at least one book study next year as well!

Combating Teacher Zombies

I read a great post by fellow educator Ron Dorland last week, Twitter: The Heartbeat of Education. Any educator I know who has braved social media and connected on Twitter would agree.  Twitter is an amazing tool for getting enthusiastic, generous teacher to share ideas and try new things.  I overlooked Twitter for far too long; I told myself I didn’t have time for one more thing.  Now, a year after I really started engaging on Twitter and building my personalized learning network (or PLN), I tell every teacher I know that I don’t have time NOT to be on Twitter.  Twitter is THE venue for the most passionate, student-centered, risk-taking educators to share, learn, and grow.  

Ron’s post made me reflect on all the ideas and energy I gain daily through my PLN, but it also made me ask why I don’t always feel this same passion and energy from my colleagues. Sure, some days are better than others; some days we share more, engage each other and our students more. But some days we enter the building like tired teacher zombies, heads down and shuffling along. What can I do, as a teacher-leader and future administrator, to help combat this beaten down, defeated attitude?

First, all educators need to realize that we mainly share our success stories through any social media like Twitter. We usually share our most engaging activities and lessons, brag a little about our best student questions, and offer those failed moments only when we have fully learned from them. In a single building, teachers see each other day in and day out, through the good moments and the ugly. It is all too easy to slip into zombie-mode! We need to be committed to broadcasting our successes to each other-in person-the way we do on social media. If we don’t celebrate the good times, no one will know beyond our walls.

Also, we connected educators need to encourage and support the rest of our colleagues to become more connected.  We must spread the word of the power of social media to form connections, transform our teaching, and increase our passion for education. Take a few minutes to show someone how to get started with Twitter, suggest a few hashtags to follow, maybe even pull up your Tweetdeck to show a colleague all the fabulous ideas coming to you in that moment! Not only will you help spread your own enthusiasm, but you might ignite that enthusiasm in a fellow teacher and help prevent that aforementioned zombie shuffle!

I am doing my part to engage my fellow teachers. I recently introduced several teachers to Twitter at an after school Tech Tuesday, including how to use Tweetdeck to manage the barrage of information headed their way now that they have been brave enough to connect themselves. I am also planning a voluntary book study of Dave Burgess’s Teach Like a PIRATE ( the “P” and “E” in PIRATE stand for passion and enthusiasm; just the thing to combat teacher zombies) in the coming weeks, where participants will engage in 15 minute Twitter Spark chats as one means of discussion. Hopefully, I can encourage them to share the wonderful ideas I know they are going to have beyond our study group and tweet them out to engage with other educators around the world.

Finally, if social media can ignite passion in teachers, imagine what it can do for our students!  Stay tuned for more thoughts about social media in the classroom soon!