I remember feeling incredibly disrespected. I had worked hard designing, assigning and grading a project that got him to learn what I wanted him to learn, and he just threw it away. And, how dare he throw it out in front of me.
What I failed to see was how disrespected he was.
This Easy Reference Index highlights posts 66-92 and continues our engaging mix of voices: classroom teachers, school-based leaders, district visionaries and other educators who support the deep learning practices (for students and professional educators) advocated in Powerful Learning Practice communities. Every post here has some relationship to “the Shift” — the necessary transformation of the education enterprise represented by new technologies, the Internet and the capacity for educators and students to become “connected” learners.
This article, reprinted with permission, appears as part of the “Why I Write” celebration, sponsored by the National Writing Project, and taking place this week across the nation. Science and math educator Marsha Ratzel, who writes regularly for PLP’s Voices from the Learning Revolution group blog, was one of several teachers asked to submit essays for the NWP project. In her piece, Marsha explains why it’s so important that students write as a way to learn science—and why science teachers should write as well.
My colleague Tanny McGregor works daily in West Clermont (OH)’s Dept of Teaching & Learning. She’s also the author of the best-selling “Comprehension Connections” and a sought-after speaker and professional developer. In this interview we talk about digital literacy and her upcoming book on helping students meet the challenge of Common Core standards in English/LA. “If I want my writing to be authentic,” she says, “if I want it to be current, if I want it to matter, then I need to be planning lessons, modeling lessons, reflecting upon instruction. It’s too easy to forget what it’s like to be in the classroom.”
One of our many jobs as teachers is to keep a professional separation between who we are and what we do. When we are doing our best, we are presenting ourselves in ways that help to manage that professional distance in thoughtful and productive ways. In social networks, this looks like being present, being thoughtful, and being intentional in the ways that we use those spaces to promote what we think is essential — ways that do not confuse our teacherness and our friendness and help our students understand the difference between the two.
In an era when teaching as a profession is disparaged, even vilified, I say let there be more leaders who know the power of “Woot.†I don’t know about you, but I cannot remember a time I experienced a standing ovation with hoots and hollers for a central office meeting. Let’s have some of that Woot to lighten the psychological load of tightened budgets, restricted resources, and political heat. Joy, says a teacher on our staff who’s a certified Laughter Yoga instructor, is extremely therapeutic.
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