Tell Your Story

There are times we have to relearn a lesson we already knew, but for whatever reason abandoned it.

This past school year I was reminded of the need to tell my story.  Over the years I have kept a portfolio of the lessons, activities and collaborations I had completed with teachers.  I have used it as a resource to get a job I really wanted it and for evidence during evaluations.  Above all, I did it for me.  I wanted to be able to look back to see how far I'd grown as an educator and also to see how I'd impacted others.   It was something I took pride in as I'd look back through it.  There wasn't anything really earth shattering, but I was proud of the things I had accomplished over the years.

Then, for lack of a better description, life happened and I became less diligent over documenting what I was doing.  That changed this year.  It started because I needed to keep a record of how we were using items purchased through a grant.  It turned into a way to get teachers and students excited about the new resources we had available.

There are a million different ways to do this.  There will be things I'll keep and things I'll do differently next year.  Regardless of where you start,  it's extremely important to document what you do and then share it.  Here's what I did...

1.  Set up a master folder:  I set up a master folder in Google Drive that I shared with administrators and our technology director.  Whenever I documented a new activity, I would set up a folder specifically for the activity so I could share the documentation with the teacher.

2.  Kept a spreadsheet:  Every time I planned/ completed an activity with a teacher I added the information to a spreadsheet.  I included the date range, number of students involved each day, grade level, subject, project, description, and tools used.  This was also added to the master folder.  It served as something like a table of contents.

3.  Pictures:  I took tons of pictures of every activity.  If I didn't, the teacher did.  Our teachers are made aware of students who cannot be photographed and I was careful not to include those students. These pictures were loaded in a folder under the master folder.

4.  Social Media:  Our school does a great job of leveraging the power of social media to share the great things happening.  I would post to my own Twitter account or have them posted on our school's Facebook and Instagram pages.

5.  Blog about it:  The blog was a bit of an afterthought.  I used this as a way to go into greater detail and to post helpful tips for others to be able to use.  I did a lot of backtracking to set it up, but it's something I want to continue for the future.

What was the impact?

1.  Evidence:  First and foremost, I had evidence of what I was doing and the impact being made with students and teachers.  I used this to fill in gaps for my evaluation, to help with our grant, to see how many unique experiences I had helped to create for students and to share sample projects with teachers.  I was able to provide the exact number of projects, students and teachers I had worked with this year.  When you can walk into your principal's office and provide hard data, it makes a difference.

2.  Reflection:  I was able to look back over the year to see the areas I excelled and those that needed work.  One thing that stood out for me was the fact that I had little impact on Math classes.  I wasn't surprised by this, but it confirmed what I knew.  Math is my weakest area.  I am not as familiar with math at a middle school level and have a hard time being able to just say, "Why don't we try this?  My homework this summer has been to start working through a Khan Academy 6th grade math class online.

3.  Ideas:  I started creating a monthly newsletter in which I shared completed projects, pictures, and data with fellow teachers.  This helped to show teachers what was available and how it could be used in their own classrooms.  I could count on hearing from a few new teachers after the newsletter went out.  That was a couple of more I could reach.  The thing that helped the most was their knowing that they didn't have to know how to work the equipment.  They just needed to provide the option for students and I would take it from there.

My challenge for you.
So here's my challenge for you for this upcoming school year.  Document what you do and share it.  Administrators can't or won't walk in for every amazing thing I know takes place in your classroom.  Parents can only go by what their children tell them.  (My boys always answered, "Nothing much." When I asked what they did at school each day.) If you are telling your story, no one has to guess.

One word of caution:
Make sure you follow your district's policy for posting student pictures and work.  It never hurts to send home your own permission forms to parents to make sure it's ok to photograph and post on social media.  Its' better to be safe than sorry.

Best of luck!

It's Been an Amazing Year!

In looking back over the past school year,  I have to admit that it's been a pretty amazing year.  The biggest highlight was getting our maker space up and running.  Students learned to use the new tools to create and enhance their classroom projects.  Teachers saw the media center as more than just a place for language arts teachers.  The results of the process included collaborating with 18 teachers and over 1900 unique student uses of our resources.  

There are several ways to set up a makerspace.  Our schedule didn't allow us a great deal of free time where students could come to just explore the tools.  Unless the use was part of a project, they were missing instruction.  So that's how we incorporated the makerspace tools.  Teachers included products created using the tools as part of their projects.  3D printed items and green screen videos were the most used tools.  I'm excited that we've added a sewing machine, the Arduinos, Lego robots, a stop motion camera, Bloxels and CUE robot to the tools students can use next year.  

My most successful collaborations were with our Social Studies teachers.  Their content allows for some pretty creative projects.  My biggest challenge came with working with my Math teachers.  I do not know the content like I do for other subjects.  That is one of my own personal PD goals for this summer.  I want to become more familiar with the content so I know how to integrate the tools without taking away the from the content.  

The key piece that made it all come together was the collaboration with teachers.  I have to admit that we have a pretty unique  staff.  For whatever reason, we just gel.  That made collaborating this year so easy and fun.  I didn't have to have formal meetings or make them sit through something that didn't apply to them.  Most of the time it started with either my asking what they were covering or them saying, "Hey, I have this project..."  The end products from the students were awesome.

One other thing I need to help find balance for are the books.  I didn't do as much library "stuff" this year as I normally do.  I focused more on the tech.  We are going back to AR next year, so I have find a happy medium to ensure both get the attention their due.