1) Be yourself (unless your “self” is rude, obnoxious, spiteful, arrogant, or similarly unpleasant in which case you should rethink your chosen profession anyway). When I first started teaching I worked very hard at adopting my “teacher persona.” I believe this was a result of some benign advice from an associate teacher or a professor at the faculty of education. The thing is, it’s exhausting and the kids see right through it. I tried to copy the teaching styles of teachers I respected and admired, and I suppose that’s not a bad way to start. It actually helped me figure out the kind of teacher that I’m not. I am not a stern no-nonsense disciplinarian. I am silly, laid-back, and occasionally irreverent. That doesn’t mean my students run amok, but I had to find my own way to “be a teacher.”

2) Dress up. A little. But dress your age. If you, like me, barreled on through your undergrad and straight into teacher’s college and then were lucky enough to get a position the next school year (I know… very lucky), then you’re… what… 23? Wow. You’re not much older than the grade 12s and you won’t look much older. You’re not going to fool anyone into thinking that you’re an ancient 30 something like I am, but when you’re 23, it’s embarrassing and awkward to be mistaken for a student (When you’re 32, it rocks). So, judge the vibe of your school. Some schools are more casual than others, but don’t think you can get away with the board short and flip-flop look that the eccentric, close-to-retirement, history teacher is “rocking” (questionably). If you dress up a little bit, it sends a signal that you think this important enough to dress up for and that helps–but don’t be afraid to out your own stamp on it that says “hey I’m not 32 yet.”

3) Don’t do stupid things. You’ve probably already been so scared by faculty of education lectures and gossipy horror stories that spread through your social foundations class about teachers who did foolish things on social media and were then fired. That’s not what I’m here to do. I do not want you to decide to erase your web presence and ban technology from the classroom because you’re afraid of all the horrible things that could happen to you. We are in an interesting place in our history right now and I suspect 20 years from now (I hope) we’ll all laugh about the angst we were having in education over social media. Rather than trying to eliminate your web presence, create a professional one. Start a professional blog where you reflect on and share evidence of your learning. Get on Twitter and start following other teachers (Not sure how to get started? Go here.). They will be a great support network for you and can help you out when it’s 1:00am and you really can’t hash out ideas with your department head and your girlfriend is sick of hearing about how stressed out you are. Don’t friend students on Facebook (I know some teachers who do and I have the utmost faith that they are extremely professional with their students but I won’t ever advise you to do it), but you may consider setting up a Facebook page for your class. If you teach in the Waterloo board in fact, it’s encouraged. That way you can keep in touch with students in with a medium they use, but they don’t have access to your personal information. Bottom line: never post anything online that you wouldn’t say in front of the class or in front of your principal. If you must vent, save it for direct messages and emails to your friends.

4) Cut yourself some slack. You won’t be a perfect teacher in your first year. Actually you’ll never be a perfect teacher. That’s okay. Think of your goal for your first year as being one of survival and harm reduction. Do as little harm as possible to yourself and your students, and you’re off to a good start in my opinion. If you’re a good teacher, you’re probably going to spend a lot of time agonizing over decisions you made, coming up with different ways you could have but didn’t handle a situation, and generally berating yourself for sucking. You probably don’t suck. Lighten up. Have a beer. Go for a night out with your non-teacher friends (do you still have those?) and don’t talk about school–they won’t get it and it’s not healthy for you to talk about it all the time.

This is hardly an exhaustive list but you probably have enough people giving you advice. Hang in there. Have some fun. Don’t take yourself so seriously.

http://danikabarker.ca/barkerblog/

Come hang out with me here. You’ll like it. It has a pretty new header courtesy of Chris Harbeck.

• evaluations are determined well before students’ needs have ever been assessed
• junior teachers are made to feel that they have to use the assessments of senior teachers because “they know better”
• little to no differentiated based on student needs, strengths, or interests

In a perfect world, department members would find plenty of time to collaborate and constant revise this evaluations, but we all know how challenging it is to find this time.

So in an effort to please the powers that be who insist on uniformity across sections* I’ve come up with a plan:

Using our computerized grade book program, “Markbook,” we can assign different mark sets. In the past, I created a Term mark set, a Final Exam mark set, and a Course Culminating Activity (ISP, CCA… etc. Choose your acronym) mark set. Each mark set was weighted according to the percentages we use to calculate the final mark.

• Term: 70%

• Final Exam: 15%

• CCA: 15%

(These numbers are determined by our board)

So now, all I’ve done is add one more mark set. Ready for it?

Here we go!

• Formative: 20%
• Summative: 50%
• Final Exam: 15%
• CCA: 15%

See what I did there? It doesn’t solve all the problems and of course we still need to be striving for at least the “appearance” of uniformity, but… now it doesn’t matter if teacher A records 15 different formative assessments and teacher B records 4 formative assessments; the summative assessments will be worth the same because of their weighting.

See this is where things were getting tricky in our department. We agreed that major assessments would be the same, (well… I didn’t agree but I don’t have a choice in the matter) but we also agreed that formative assessments could differ depending on the class (I did agree with this). But if Teacher A had 15 different formative assessments and Teacher B only had 4, then Teacher B’s summative assessment would be worth proportionately way more than Teacher A. Trying to get all the weightings to line up in Markbook is just ridiculous and doesn’t allow for much freedom in designing formative assessments UNLESS you do what I did.

So is it a perfect fix? No. But at least we can clearly show that regardless of the types and variety of formative assessments (or “rehearsals” if you like), the summative tasks (“performances”) are still worth the same percentage of the overall mark.

The only real challenge with this is that in the very early progress reports, the marks will be skewed (although, the are anyway). So we might have to play around with the weighting of the mark sets in the early stages to give students and parents a more accurate understanding of their progress. By midterm, however, we should be able to use the actual weightings.

We’ll see how this goes! Let me know what you think of the plan, or if you’ve tried something similar.

*… for perfectly understandable reasons, I should add: Students and parents complain when there is a perception that one teacher is “marking differently” than another teacher. The perception is that students in one  class are not receiving the same treatment as students in another class. Now, having students complete the same assessment doesn’t alleviate this problem; it just helps with the perception.

When I’m planning for something new (a course, a big paper, etc.) I tend to spend a lot of time doing what looks like unproductive work. I beat myself up about it and it fills me with anxiety and dread, particularly when I have a looming deadline. I stare at the computer screen or blank piece of paper and berate myself saying, “Come ON! Just DO something! MAKE something! Stop wasting time!” I click through links on Twitter, check Facebook, end up with 15 different tabs open on my browser, spend time that later seems completely unnecessary writing things on post it notes and scattering them all over the desk top, wall, cat….

But eventually the inspiration hits. The flow starts. I create stuff.

So is it procrastination or part of the process?

Photo by charbeck10

Some of the really big moments for me this past weekend at Unplugd was the informal storytelling that happened in those magic moments by candlelight or firelight with loons calling from the lake and mosquitoes sucking the blood out of my ankles. Most of those moments can’t really be archived (nor should they). One conversation however, led me to tell this story that I never planned on telling. I felt like the story I told this weekend had to be one of personal triumph. It had to be some story about how something I was passionate about was confirmed by some success I had in the classroom. Instead I told this story after a conversation with one of my fellow campers (who is deeply awesome).

I wrote this as a letter, but I’ve left out the name of the student I wrote it for:

Dear ______,

I’ve been teaching for eight years now and each year I teach around 160 kids. So if you multiply the number of kids by the number of years you get like… a lot. And out of all those kids, there are always a few kids who stick with you. Sometimes they’re kids who you really had a big connection with. Or the ones who made you laugh or the ones who had real breakthroughs in your class and you feel like you contributed to that in some way. You remember them because they affirmed for you all the things you want to believe about yourself as a teacher and as a person.

And then there are the kids like you, who I remember because when you walked in the room I felt like I had nothing to offer you. I felt like I brought my A game everyday I would agonize over what to do with you so much that people started to wonder if I had any other students in my class.

You were angry and everything I did seemed to make you angrier. I’d think I was finally getting through to you and then you would disappear for a week and when you came back you looked sick and and tired and I knew that you had stuff going on in your life that was so much bigger than anything we were doing in our class.

And so all I could do was give you books. Because when I gave you a book you’d read it and you told me that you liked them because they were so real. And so I just kept feeding you books. And I wish this turned into a story where the books I gave you opened up a new world and the encouragement I gave you made you see your potential and you got your credit and lived happily ever after.

But this isn’t one of those stories. They’re never going to make a movie about this. because this isn’t a teacher story; this is a student story. It’s about you, not me.

You taught me to let go of the need to make it about me.

So thanks. I hope you liked the books.

-Ms B.

And yeah, I kind of cried when I told the story and I’ll probably always kind of cry when I tell the story.

Lots of sequels come out in the summer time (I think… Just go with it), and the OTF Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century conference was no exception. I was lucky to attend the conference last February as a panelist discussing my take on the use of social media in the classroom. Then I was doubly lucky to be able to hang out with Will Richardson (who’s played a huge role in influencing my philosophy about technology in the classroom) during the Minds on Media sessions the following day.

For the #OTF21C sequel (check that hashtag on twitter to see an archive of the tweets from the past three days), I got to repeat my panelist role but also became a Minds on Media facilitator (which meant less time picking Will’s brain but more time hanging with cool teachers eager to learn about blogging).

The panel discussion was essentially very similar to the one back in February. I noticed the same tension between those people (students, teachers, consultants) who are working with social media and those people (union representatives) tasked with protecting teachers from the potential dark side of social media. And I noticed Will biting his tongue at times (Excellent restraint, Will!). I just hope that down the road there will be teachers and students and administrators who shake their heads with amusement as they look back on the “old days” when we were all filled with angst about technology. There was one question toward the end of the panel from a teacher who was very concerned that students might be spending too much time in front of screens to the detriment of their physical and socio-emotional well-being. I’ve started to get a little tired and frustrated by questions like this, but I have to exercise a little more patience. I think I replied with something like, “Maybe, but people said the same thing about books, when books became more readily accessible. Same argument; different medium.” It is the same argument, but I have to remember that this is still a new and threatening area for some people so they may not see it as being the same.

After the panel Brian and I braved the record-breaking temperatures outside the hotel to visit Melanie McBride and Jason Nolan at the EDGE lab which is part of Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone. Wow is this place ever mind blowing! Read more about it here. After a tour, we headed upstairs where all the different teams worked. It’s an eclectic group. There were teams working on everything from mobile health apps (VitalHub) to game development (HugeMonster Inc.). And then there were research teams including EDGE lab where my friend Melanie works. The EDGE lab itself was a pretty eclectic group made up of people who brought unique and often opposing perspectives. Noah and Jason demonstrated some soft circuit prototypes they had developed to help adorable little girl communicate in and interact with her peers in spite of her limited speech and motor skills. We had some great conversations (I can’t even begin to attempt to sum them up here) about school and learning (and how the two are quite often mutually exclusive!). It’s incredibly liberating to talk to people who are interested in education but are not constrained by the traditional education system. There are so many ideas we don’t even discuss in education because we know we “can’t do that” in our current system. We walked back to the hotel like zombies, although in fairness I think was 38 degrees in downtown Toronto with a breeze that felt like a gust from a convection oven.

Then there was some much-needed socializing, and that’s all I’ll say about that.

Friday was devoted to Minds on Media. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Minds on Media process (brilliantly organized by Peter Skillen and Brenda Sherry), unlike traditional PD where one might sign up for a session, sit in a chair and listen to the presenter’s agenda, teachers are free to move from station to station and the agenda is that of the participants. I had a bunch of links and resources prepared but essentially my first question when people arrived was, “So, what do you want to talk about?” It was exhausting, but very rewarding and I loved it when a teacher ran over to me, beaming, saying “I just wrote my first blog post! And I embedded a video!”

I love these conferences because they provide me with a chance to learn as much as (or usually more) than I present, but I also love them because they are, as Melanie would say, affinity spaces. These are spaces where I get to learn how I want with the people who I want to learn with. Thanks to all my friends, old and new, for the great experience.

Doug Peterson, a friend and prolific blogger has posted a number of reflections on his own blog which you can read here.

Now I know this sounds a little jargony and the one thing I want to be careful to avoid (at least in my blog posts) as I pursue graduate work is jargon. So let me break it down for you and explain what I took away from this paper.

Links from presentation:

Media Literacy

Media Awareness Network
Don’t Buy It
Centre for Media Literacy
Association for Media Literacy
Critical Media Literacy

Blogs to Read

Dangerously Irrelevant
Free Technology for Teachers
Moving at the Speed of Creativity
Cool Cat Teacher
The Spicy Learning Blog
Weblogg-Ed

New Teacher Resources

Tools for the 21st Century Teacher
The Educator’s PLN Ning

Follow these people on Twitter.

Photo by tim.la

Some may accuse me of trolling when I suggest that the notion paying for media that I could easily though not ethically download is an artifact of middle class privilege. Still it’s a thought I’d like to explore.

As I become more educated about the world of web 2.0 and all its inherent issues, I try to make more of a conscious effort to model the types of digital citizenship I expect from my students. But try as I might I still get dirty looks from students when I explain to them that it’s unethical to reproduce another person’s work without their permission, that they should pay for an artist’s music rather than download from a bit torrent site, and that “finding it on Google” does not make it fair use.

It’s not that I don’t believe that these are important issues. I want my students to be good digital citizens.

But I’ve also been thinking that my own belief in value of these ideals didn’t evolve until I had enough disposable income to not think twice about spending money on something that I could privately download for free–oh let’s call it what it is–steal.

I am not advocating an end to teaching ethical use of digital media. All I’m saying is that it’s a lot easier to be ethical when you can afford it. So how do we make all our students care–not just the ones who can easily afford to care?