EDU 653 Week #6

Entry #1 Twitter

I have a twitter account.  Check me out @fhcbradanderson .  Two and half years ago I signed up for twitter.  And there my account sat for two years almost without a single "tweet" or a single follower.  Pretty sad really.  I had no idea what twitter meant and what it could do for me and my continuous learning as a coach and teacher.  It would have gone on like this had it not been for an early morning breakfast with a good friend of mine.

Sitting at the corner table (where I always park it) at my favorite mom 'n' pop breakfast place I sat across from my friend to talk about what we usually talk about - wrestling.  I am the varsity wrestling coach at the high school and he is an involved parent, volunteer coach and booster member.  I have these frequent breakfasts with the many stakeholders of my program.  It's my small way of staying connected in this wifi world we now live.  You cannot beat a face-to-face conversation.  However, you also cannot ignore the power of social networking and "the social web" as Will Richardson calls it in his book Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.  

After talking about next year's line-up and other particulars, we started to talk about communication.  "How do we best communicate to the parents and the wrestlers?"  I asked.  My friend, who is a multimedia and graphic designer by trade, had a few thoughts: 1) accurate, timely updates of the team website for the parents 2) for the kids, facebook and twitter.

Right away I knew I could step up my game with the website.  I only updated it during the season and that was weekly at best.  He told me that people want interesting info about the team all year - even if that audience is small - and they should be able to find that content on our website (or they will go someplace else figuratively).  I also was pretty positive about my ability to update and create posts on the team facebook group page.  The group page was started by one of my athletes and he quickly allowed me to be an administrator.  With a most of my wrestlers members and a smattering of parents members as well, I quickly began posting camp pictures, links to wrestling articles, and interesting wrestling video clips.  The facebook updates were fun and comprehensible.

Twitter however was another ballgame.  I needed to jump in head first.  I knew the power of twitter.  I was never skeptical of twitter (as other skepticisms have been chronicled on this blog).  I just hadn't bothered to learn how to effectively use it.  I didn't understand the #hashtag or the @ symbol.  I didn't get the "connect" feature and I didn't know who to follow.  So I dove in.  I found my favorite news destinations and followed them.  I then found interesting leaders on both sides of the aisle and followed them.  Then I found my favorite wrestling websites and became a follower.  Finally I began following some education sites.  Within days, twitter became my "go-to" source for news, articles, video clip links and motivational quotes.  I was hooked.  I was a twitter fan.

Now the trick was to use twitter to my advantage.  That is where I learned how to retweet interesting posts. I also began to regale my followers with interesting news about our wrestling program and also post my favorite motivational quotes (hey, I'm a wrestling coach, right!).  All of the sudden I picked up a few followers and a few more.  At publication I am pushing 45 followers (I know that's sad, but it's better than collecting dust!).  What is interesting to me is the @connect feature.  I am watching people respond and interact with what I post.  I have found that people not only pay attention to my tweets but they "favorite" them and "retweet" them often.

My hope is, that by next season (19 weeks and one day away!) I will have all of my wrestlers, all of my twitter-using parents and a handful of fans "following" @fhcbradanderson, so that next time I sit down with my friend for coffee we can talk about our communication as a strength rather than an area of weakness.

Entry #2 Storytelling
A Response to an Edutopia blog by
Suzi Boss, Journalist & PBL Advocate
(Click Here for Link)

"Your students graduate not just prepared, but inspired to chase their own whys." -quote by a New Tech graduate.

I am in 100% agreement with this statement.  Learning skills are important to master and important for a teacher to impart.  Nonetheless, I believe up to and maybe even exceeding 50% of a teacher's job is to inspire.  I am not talking about a one-time "rah-rah" speech at the beginning or end of the school year.  I am also not talking about "when you're in the real world you'll need to be..." speeches either.  Like Boss' article states, "It's either Dead Poets Society or Bad Teacher," laments Chaltain.  What this refers to is what the public views us as - either inspired, cutting-edge risk-takers that flaunt convention or the stodgy teacher that laminates their lesson plans.  Most of us know, those are caricatures of extremes.  Most of us lean towards progress, improvising, adapting and building new ways to overcome learning barriers.  

Inspiration can and should come in many forms and it must be frequent.  As Boss' article states, "The Ignite (educational resource) slogan is 'Enlighten us, but make it quick." Passion is essential. Humor doesn't hurt. Good visuals are a must.' "  How true.

If a teacher wishes to inspire they must employ many tactics to reach a variety of skill sets, personalities and souls.  

Every Monday my students know the first thing we do is "Monday Motivation".  It starts off as my collection of quotes (Teddy Roosevelt & Rudyard Kipling poems are a frequent visitors) and YouTube clips ("I am a Champion" and "How bad do you want it?" are favorites of mine) and then by the second semester I find that students invest by sending me or recommending to me their favorite quotes, clips, stories and so on.  I encourage them to "own it" and find things that motivate them.  We acknowledge that not every day is "sunshine and rainbows" and sometimes - many times - we need inspiration.  

I also use teachable moments from class activities, random acts of kindness or meanness I see, current events, or school issues to stand on my soap box.  My students know my "speeches" are 5-minutes or less (mostly), and they have a certain model: 1) the hook or attention-getter 2) the tease 3) an anecdote 4) the message 5) and relief (Thank You Chris Matthews and The Hardball Handbook!).  I explain in very direct terms what it means to be honest, to work hard, to face failure and move forward, to have courage and treat others with kindness.  We dialogue and the students respond.

I also use, what many teachers think is a waste of instructional time, movie clips from Rudy (Go Irish!), Rocky (any training montage or Rocky self-actualization moment will do), It's a Wonderful Life (who doesn't identify with George Bailey and his personal sacrifices?), Scent of a Woman (can you beat that closing speech by Pacino?!), and Cinderella Man (even I tear-up a little when he - spoiler alert - beats Max Baer).  I use these timeless films to illustrate the richness of life, the triumph of the spirit, the heart of champions, and the idea that effort over time can equal success.  The 45 minutes spent here-and-there on scenes from these movies at well-timed moments of the year can pay huge dividends.  First, the students who have seen the films connect to you and your humanness.  Second, the students who have not seen the films are exposed to some great cinema and heart-felt moments they otherwise might not ever see.  Next, you show the students that you care about more than academia, that you care about their spirit, their motivation, and their education as well-rounded people.  Finally (actually, I could go on-and-on), the students feel better about overcoming obstacles and enduring hardship if only for a brief moment.  It promotes self-efficacy - something that is lost in this world of participation ribbons and awards for everything and anything.

Inspiring - or at least attempting to inspire - students is to me a solemn duty.  I am there to ignite a "fire in their bellies".  You cannot expect 16-year-olds to always want to learn for the sake of learning.  Sometimes they need to be reminded that life is a journey, that they are on a bath that is one-part academic and one-part spiritual.  They need to see you, the role model, getting fired-up.
The best compliment I can get from a student is that they recognize I am passionate.  Because, if I am not passionate about learning and about the journey, then why should they be?!

Being a good storyteller is also a part of embracing your role as "inspirer-in-chief".  Will you be the teacher that they remember as "lighting their fire"?  Or will you be just another cog in the wheel?  

Storytelling, motivating, inspiration, building life-long learners, guiding students towards lifelong passion and pursuits...those to me are the reasons I became a teacher.  The content is merely a vessel.