Think Like a Teacher

I began a series of overlays to Blogger Alison Anderson’s ten great ideas for opening our classrooms to parents without making it a time-consuming teacher task. As I have allowed the ideas to steep, I find more overlays, extensions and implications of the easy, tech-leveraged sharing that can emanate from our classrooms to involve parents. So here is Part Two:

6. Open sharing for parent involvement and learning reinforcement immediately begs the question: will your school allow Bring You Own Device (BYOD) sharing? If the kids have their phones and we can have them send the tweets or images to share with parents, why not? Perhaps some carefully conducted experiments in pro-active sharing can support  your efforts to promote a BYOD initiative. Kids share, Parents ask. Parents understand. Kids learn and remember. Repeat. [Yes, I know there are all sorts of monitoring and management issues, but if we survived open classrooms in the 1970s and 80s, we can figure this out. Other schools have done it, so we can learn from their policies and mistakes!]

7. The ultimate open sharing would be a live webcam. Would you, as a teacher,  you want a live webcam in your classroom? Legalities aside, this raises interesting issues, to say the least. Even if you password protect the webcam so only logged in parents can see it, how does a parent understand when tuning in for a few moments here or there? What about snippets viewed out of context? You could have a pretty good class discussion about individual rights and constitutionality by asking your middle or high school students what they would think of sharing via webcam. It might be interesting to hang a dummy camera for one day during your Constitution unit!

8. Teaching about context and purpose. As media consumers, we are all subject to manipulation. What a great way to flip this around by asking students their purpose in sharing a particular item from class. Did they offer enough context so others can understand it? Did they imply that it was something different by removing it from context? How can “innocent” social media sharing manipulate a message? If you ask any middle schooler how to push his/her parent’s buttons by selecting one thing to share from today’s class, I guarantee he/she will know which thing is certain to fire up mom or dad.

9. What did you learn from YOUR kid’s school today? It is important to show our kids that parents are learners just as we should show teachers are learners. This is where some positive spin from businesses or local media could help by asking/posting the question: What did you learn from YOUR kid’s school today? Wouldn’t that be a great app on Facebook, sponsored by Walmart or  Staples? Simply sharing the message that we can learn from our kids is a powerful way to validate learning across our society and support schools with more than money. I think a lot about ways we could bring businesses and others into more effective, grassroots partnerships with education, and this one seems easy.

10. Employers who value education should value their employees’ involvement as parents. If you allow employees to spend five minutes of their break checking out what is happening at their child’s school, you are saying that school matters and that parenthood matters. Celebrate the sharing. It will pay off with more involved parents, higher achieving kids, and better future employees.

There’s a lot more to social media than selling products. We can involve parents and sell learning.

In the 1970s and 80s, “open” classrooms were vast expanses of space with free-flowing, flexible arrangements of furniture and students around a curriculum in constant flux. I know. I taught in an open classroom school that attracted VIP fact-finding tours from far and wide. Today we “open” our classrooms with technology, allowing people to visit, observe, and participate. Parents are today’s VIP invitees, and today’s technologies make opening the classroom easier and easier. Blogger Alison Anderson shares ten great ideas for opening your classroom to parents without making it a time-consuming teacher task. Her tech-savvy suggestions are just one layer among the advantages, means, and results of involving parents in today’s “open” classrooms. I agree that having students manage the sharing is ideal.  The tools are plentiful. To make the student sharing and parent involvement/home discussion even better, there is some deliberate thinking we may want to do as teachers. So I offer some overlays on the subject. I can tell this will be on my mind for a while, but here is part one:

1. Parents may need help knowing what to ask. When their question is “What did you do in school today?” the answer is doomed from the start. What was that thing you were laughing at in the science class video? Who decided which picture to post today?  Why did you share that picture? By sharing media that prompts questions, we and our students can make the home conversations more informative, more supportive of learning, and just plain fun for both parents and kids. We might even make parents lives a little easier. It never hurts to make  busy parents happy.

2. As teachers, we take the time to encourage higher level thinking and questioning from our students.  How do we encourage parents to think and question deeply? We should be deliberate about which images. words, or multimedia we encourage students to share. Ask the kids what would make their parents curious. Ask them which two images would best represent the day. Two will invite comparison, contrast, or analysis to explain why they go together.

3. Ideas invite questions. Assuming you have a class Twitter account, use the brief format for text-only ideas. Tweet students’ what-ifs. Tweet the oddest question asked in class today. Tweet an alliteration about today’s topic. Have a contest for the best end of class summary tweet in a clever format. (Your gifted students will spend most of the class period trying to think of the best one — and actually stay connected to the topic at hand for a change). If there are bonus point attached to authoring a good tweet, you may have more than you need. Or let the class vote for Today’s Tweet.

4. Kids WANT to share (or we can nudge them a bit). Kids are social beings and braggers. Elementary kids will share anything(!), any time. Middle schoolers may not select the things you would want parents to see (the smartphone shot of the kid picking his nose with the lab equipment), but they definitely want to share something. Give them incentives to brag a little. Teens in secondary classrooms are more reticent and dare not be uncool by sounding enthusiastic. But if we teach multiple sections of the same thing, why not spark a little competition between classes to share the most thought provoking or clever or insightful tweet, image, etc. on the same topic.

5. Learning about what is appropriate to share from your open classroom is an easy way to teach digital citizenship in context. Adults offer long lists of social network do’s and don’ts, but our students need practice. The reports that come back the next day: “What did your parents ask last night  after we shared that Instagram from class?” may be exactly the life lessons we need so students learn ramifications of sharing.  The lessons are ongoing, self-reinforcing, and authentic.

Are you seeing different overlays on this simple topic? Stay tuned for Part two…

Eleven years ago, the day began with a sky as blue as today’s, the air as crisp as a back-to-school outfit. An hour and a half into my morning email routine as a technology integration specialist, my supervisor’s voice exploded from the conference room down the hall, “Candy, come quick! It’s a catastrophe!” The rest of the day unraveled in glimpses of TV sets through classroom doors as I tried to maintain normalcy inside a high school filled with gasps and to respond to email requests for news updates from elementary teachers behind news blackouts designed to protect the very young. The slide show of that day replays every time I watch or hear the tales again. As Americans, we tell our versions over and over.  As a teacher, I want our children and teens to hear them. I teach 9/11.

I have a son who has flown his jet in Afghanistan on missions I will never know about. He began the path to those missions on 9/12. I have numerous former students who have followed similar paths. Those who were old enough to remember 9/11 tell their stories in their own ways just as my parents, teenagers during Pearl Harbor, told theirs. I remember realizing as a child that the lesson in my history class  was my parents’ high school reality. Many times since then, especially as they aged, I asked for more detail. Teachers themselves, they willingly told me what they could recall, tinted by their perspectives of a World War and all the decades since. I don’t recall them ever being the ones to bring it up, though. But if I asked… they taught Pearl Harbor.

Now I have grandsons too young to know 9/11.  I know college students, teens, and tweens  who have no solid recollection of that blue sky, calamitous day. As  teachers, we must tell the stories. We must point our students to read and listen and understand what is beyond today’s clear sky and memorial bells. I know this day will always make me stop and think and want to tell the story. I utter a quiet “YES!” when I see sites like Moment Tracker.  I want to be sure that someone is telling the story so our children will continue to ask for it. I teach 9/11.

Make time for what’s “good for you.” Exercise 30 minutes a day. Eat organic. Go outside. Read to your child. Drink water. Set aside quality time. Model responsible behavior. Oh, and reduce stress.

We know what we’re supposed to do and why it is good for us. We just don’t know how to fit it all into a teacher’s week. Now add to the list: staying up to date on new approaches to teaching and learning (often using technology). As someone who finally figured out where to find the time for some of the above, I wonder whether the same strategies –with a little tech assistance– could work for the other things, like staying up to date with tech for learning.

Strategy 1: Where were you?

I have read that we are more likely to exercise if we have comrades at the gym or pool or on our walks. Simply knowing that you’ll be asked, “Where were you?” is often enough to make you go when you’d really like to skip. My swim friends have no authority over me, but anticipation of their concern is enough to drag me out of bed before 5 am on cold, winter mornings. Even the casual acquaintances who greet you on regular walks will ask why they have missed you. Easier to just do it than to make up excuses. Try establishing the same “where were you” type of group in your faculty room for Better Teaching Tuesdays or on Twitter by joining one of the many #chats. But be sure to  befriend enough buddies in the chat that they will ASK you where you have been if you do not show up.  As I scan chats, I see enough side conversations about vacations, family, and local lore to recognize the same kind of conversations that happen in my swim locker room. Support each other’s professional development simply by asking, “where were you” when a frequent chat buddy is absent, and ask your buddy to do the same for you.

Strategy 2: Let them notice

There is nothing like having someone say, “You look good. Have you been exercising?” or “I wish I read to my kids as much as you read to yours.”  If you keep your success at beating the time bandits completely secret, you may never hear these invigorating reinforcements. Leave a trail that others can find. Facebook is great for this. So are blogs. Mention the book you and the kids just finished or the great story you heard at the gym. Be honest about how much you hate broccoli as you share the first broccoli recipe you can stand on Pinterest. Maybe even share the first tech tool you figured out. It’s not bragging if you are simply giving people a small view of a minor accomplishment. I don’t think I’d list my breakfast menu, but I see how many comments my friends receive when they share a pic of a culinary coup. I personally have a bit more trouble with the running apps that share how fast you ran 5 miles, but that is probably my problem, not yours. To me, sharing limited peeks is better than trumpeting announcements. To each his own. A great side benefit of playing in the social network venue is that you are learning the way your students like to learn. How can you adapt it as a class activity?

Strategy 3: Find the app for that

If nothing else, apps add novelty. Heaven knows, they multiply like mosquitos, with a new buzz hourly. A lasting favorite of mine is Flipboard. I like being able to add Twitter searches, favorite blogs, and just plain news into one magazine-style app that I can browse without feeling like I am working. I admit I don’t stay up to date on all the new apps that come out. I wait to read what others say on Twitter and try them when I notice 3- 6 tweets about the same app. Must be good, right?  App shopping is like using coupons. You try new products when you hear enough buzz and you think it’s cheap enough to try. (Either that or your eight year old is hounding you to buy it.)

Strategy 4: Balance your diet

Twitter is dark chocolate for the teaching heart. I could stay on all day, but I know it is not the only food for thought. There are other options that offer high fiber (online pubs like Learning and Leading), large tossed salad webinars, and  the full meal experience of  creating a conference presentation or online PD session. I especially savor the face to face potluck paloozas like the ISTE conference where I meet and simply talk with other teachers.

I certainly don’t stick to what is good for me, and I often do not meet recommended daily allowances of professional development. I’ll keep working on serving things up at TeachersFirst if you promise to try some tech broccoli once in a while.