So I've just spent the last 2 days at the TIES Conference in Minneapolis taking in anything I could about technology, visions and ideas of what other districts are doing. As always it was AMAZING! Now I'm coming down from the tech high and trying to sort through and organize everything so I can share it with the rest of my staff so they have the same enthusiasm and excitement that I have.
I heard Angie Kalthoff share ways to use Google Forms. Besides just for assessment, we need to be integrating these with our office staff to make their work load easier and gather more demographic information electronically. Permission slips for field trips? How many times has a student lost this? Well it won't happen electronically!
Mark Garrison gave his annual presentation 50 Sites for Great Teaching. I love listening to Mark talk, his energy is infectious! If you ever have a chance to hear him, don't pass it up. And I felt great that some of the things he presenting I was already using! Yeah for Me! (Toot my own horn a little bit!)
Kris Szajner is doing some great things to change how schools are using Professional Development to engage more teachers. Are we doing PD that brings teachers forward and challenges them? We expect our students to do this, why do we not expect the same from our teachers? What's missing in PD today? Continuous learning and ongoing conversations. Social Media connections are one way to achieve this, but we need to think outside the box and find more ways for this to happen. If you're into Twitter chats, Kris was one of the creators of #mnedchat, Tuesday nights, 8PM Central time.
Highlight for me was George Couros. As I sat with one of my colleagues in his Tuesday session, she said he was the only presenter that could bring tears to her eyes as she listened to him speak. Shouldn't all of us in education be able to do that when they talk about our students, our classes, our passion in education? He asked questions like "Why is it bad if a students brings a device into the classroom?' If it is, there's a problem with this (and being a 1:1 school, there shouldn't be any issues with this right?) Communicating with parents is key, and utilizing social media outlets will increase our chances of connecting with them (meet them where they're at right? Just like the kids).
Now this question he posed got me thinking, Why don't we invite parents to conferences like TIES? Not teacher/parents, but just parents, who have kids in our district? Why would we not want them to learn what we're learning? We should be on the same team, driving down the field for a better education for "our" kids. This is an area I plan to do better. I want to work with the parents in our district to give our students the best education possible, I want them to be more successful in life than they thought could ever be possible.
Where do I go from here? I know I need to continue to be passionate about what I do everyday, I need to develop an infectious passion that others will want to follow, I need to inspire my colleagues to always keep in mind, everyday we need to be doing what's best for kids! So #FmtCards, who's with me?
