Don't plan the summer without reading this blog!

The purpose of this blog today is to convince teachers to start an online professional learning network this summer.  Many wonderful bloggers have written on the same subject and I started to just give a link to those sites, but instead I want to share my own personal PLN story.  My journey begins with a strong desire to learn and find ways to do my job better.  People being lifelong learners is something I believe in with all my heart.  I ENJOY learning and I think the path to creating a PLN will be rewarding for all educators who love to learn. If someone is in education and doesn't love to learn, something is seriously wrong, right?  

Back to my journey . . . I want to discover new things and find out about what other educators are doing.  The school where I work offers plenty to do without planning any extras.  Many opportunities abound to tackle behavior, help families and trouble-shoot technology.  At times I feel like a highly educated repair man more than anything else.  What happened to lifelong learning, teaching, guiding teachers through observations, helping design lessons, creating better math interventions, doing math interventions, and transforming our school?  I long for that kind of progress.  The timing hasn't been quite right to begin a Phd and an online degree from a faraway school doesn't feel engaging to me.  Instead for now, I've turned to Twitter.  I had heard about people using Twitter for professionals reasons rather than reading posts about the latest trend in shoe styles.  So I signed up and started following different educators.  I looked for principals that were writing about experiences and best practices.  I quickly found that Twitter was a place to drive traffic to a blog.  I couldn't believe all the great writing I found on educational blogs.  I even started reading a math blog from Finland!  I felt invigorated about professional learning again.  No one was complaining and everyone was writing about great experiences going on in schools. Even though I thought I was doing all I could, I discovered that I really was only keeping the boat afloat rather than actively guiding the ship.  
Daily life in school can pull someone in many directions.  Students are a challenge to manage at times and the constant grind of the school day wearing.  I like to compare it to an actor being on stage 6 hours a day 5 days a week with an audience that can't leave.  

An infusion of connections with similar professionals fighting the same battles is very refreshing!  Educators who tackle the same issues and make progress offer hope that problems can be solved. So I started reading Tweets and going to links, but I still wasn't fully connected.  I thought Twitter was about developing a group with the same interests and communicating regularly.  Then I discovered the hastag #gaed and the experience on Twitter became a different thing altogether.  Every Thursday night at 8:00 PM I jump on Twitter and talk with regulars who show up in a feed on a particular topic related to education.  There is even a parent at our school that is a teacher at another school on the hashtag --someone I've personally met.  These people comment on my posts, I on theirs, and new people start following me.  One day I even received a tweet from State Superintendent, John Barge!  My wife, a librarian, posted about books and received replies from award-winning authors.  Never before has the ability to connect and communicate with the source of information been so great.  My daughter was doing a research  paper and read an article. She then emailed the researcher and received detailed information in return. Because I value learning, discovering the power of online learning is exciting to me.  

Next, I decided that I wanted a blog so that I could truly communicate ideas and learning.  I talk with many superstar educators by reading their blogs and commenting back to them.  The flow of ideas is so powerful it could actually make a difference with a challenging issue being worked out the next day. My blog over the last few months has been directed at motivation and I've come to the conclusion that people are motivated by what makes them happy.  Of course that seems really simple, but that's really it.  Watching a favorite program on TV, sitting on the porch with family, going to a bluegrass festival, reading or whatever it may be . . .  Learning is what makes me happy and it's why I became a teacher.  I BELIEVE in life long learning and I can still become better at most anything in my 40s and beyond.  My motivation for using Twitter is that my Professional Learning Network (PLN) will help me learn. Another motivation for writing a blog is to learn to be a better writer. It's inspiring to see people discussing how they are making improvements in their professional lives that make them better educators and leaders.  People on Goodreads sharing about books, teachers sharing experiences with BYOT, principals sharing experiences of working with parents, and of course, what to do about common core. 

Still reading? That means maybe I'm making a convincing case for starting a Professional Learning Network!  I suggest setting up 4 sites on the internet.   A blog to write about learning and problem solving, Pinterist to share visuals, Edmodo for parents, and a Twitter account to connect with professionals. The first pledge has to be to connect as a professional and share ideas just as much as borrowing them.  Be a producer of knowledge, not just a consumer!
  
Read the following link and watch the TED video.
Think like a leader, because everyday teachers lead 20 to 30 students into the future. Malcom Gladwell's book, Outliners, begins with a story about an exceptional community of healthy people.  A community virtually absent of heart disease.  Medical researchers landed on this community to figure out how it had happened.  Surely it was the diet, exercise, or genetics.  What they found out is that this community made up of immigrants from the same town in Italy, were a tight knit community that never stopped communicating with each other.  They had more civic organizations than the average community and families supported each other.  My professional learning network will become a version of that group for me.  Yes, it will mainly be online but that is the reality of the 21st century. It seems like a healthy community to me!

One more link to help you get started Tips for Twitter.
Good Luck and you can follow me @stanlearn on Twitter.

Wagging puppy tails

I started to take the week off from posting, but my goal has been to post every week until I decide to stop.  My focus on motivation has taken me through three books:
Mastery by Robert Greene
The Power of Habits by Charles Duhigg
The WillPower Instinct by Kelly McGonigal
I'm still reading The Willpower Instinct but I've come to a conclusion about motivation.  Motivation is the desire for happiness.  The question and confusion comes with the word happiness.
Students walk into your room with different definitions of happiness: playing video games for hours, playing out side with no goal just enjoying whatever happens, watching Tv, eating, reading, and the list could go on and on.  As educators we have to create an environment that makes school part of happiness.  Langston is our new puppy and he just turned 5 months old.  He seems to enjoy everything and especially eating, he seems to be happy.  I ran today, that made me happy.  It was the first time in five months I ran without pain!
Every Monday start your morning off asking about their weekend.  This time should be like the Ozzie and Harriet dinner time.  One student talks the others listen and have them repeat their classmates thoughts.  Truly engage in each student and have them learn to engage in each other, teach everyone to be present in the moment.  One year I had a little girl tell me every Monday that she went to Golden Corral for lunch after church on Sunday.  That was a very respectable event for her family and she was proud of being able to go out to eat.  Food was always her motivator.  This may seem funny but that piece of knowledge can get you over mountains.  Knowing who is playing sports, taking dance, wishing for a new bike, family is getting a divorce, family having a baby, relative moving in, step brother moving in, staying up to late and the list goes on.  They give you the information you need to read their actions and thoughts.  Yes, it takes time but it's worth every minute of it, if you create a risk free environment, and allow students to speak you may become their motivator.
Give the above books a try and find out what makes you happy, it may change your career.

Real reform - Educators treated like doctors and lawyers

Reform that might actually change something!


http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/13/opinion/teachers-will-we-ever-learn.html?pagewanted=all

Everyone in education needs to read the above article and send it to your congress person. I believe I wrote something very similar when I was in graduated school about solutions for education.  Reform is focused in the wrong place.  Policy makers are trying to reform classrooms when they need to reform the system.  I would add one comment.  All parents should be required by law to attend a student led conference twice during the year.  All parents should be required to attend training sessions to understand the common core curriculum.
Tell me what you think about the article.

How much persuasion goes into motivation?

Below is a 12 minute video on the science of persuasion.  I'm interested in how you can use the principles of this video to increase student motivation in your classroom.  Tell me what you think.

Beverly Hall and the Game of Thrones

After watching Game of Thrones I understand Beverly Hall's thinking a little better. There is nothing else but success and if you can't win by following the rules make up your own. It really doesn't matter if she is convicted or not the damage is done. 90% of her principals left or were fired and scores increased in percentages that just aren't possible. I'm sorry something wasn't right. I hate to judge but why would any public school leader have an $100,000 budget per year for travel in her district.
So what's the take away, why should anyone care about Beverly Hall?  Education can not be judge like a business that makes widgets or produces a product. If my Iphone doesn't work I can take it back to Apple. If everyone has problems their stock price may go down. If three students out of 30 fail math, is the teacher defective?
The struggle lies in how education is evaluated.  It can't be test scores, but we need a way to evaluate ourselves.  A teacher evaluation system needs to be based on science and art. Science of  motivation - What principles do you use to motivate your students?  What latest research have you read to back up your reasoning? What action research have you done over the years to evaluate your approach? The art of motivation is completely different because students are humans and humans are not the same.  The art of motivation is making theories come to life.  How would we know?  School administrators that visit your class regularly and talk with your students and parents.
The science of teaching - What pedagogy styles do you adhere too?  How do you engage, assess, differentiate, and grade your students?  Show me you data, examples of student work, and videos of student lead conferences.
One more instrument to finish off the evaluation would be business of the classroom: attendance, grading, and school paper work on time.  What type of team player are you?  What type of professional learning are you doing and plan to do?
Our evaluation system doesn't have to be so complicated to work.  Complicated systems create cheaters.  It's just like our tax code, someone will find a flaw to make the system work for them.  Simple is better.  However, simple must be ruled by smart.  The system I mentioned above will take time and lovers of education.  It will not work with managers of schools that want boxes to check and standards to rate.
Beverly Hall thought she was the Queen of the House of Atlanta city schools but she didn't protect her name.  In the Game of Thrones your name is the only thing that lives on.  You have to honor it at all cost.
Great school leaders will hardly ever make the paper.  They won't be seen smiling for awards or riding in expensive cars.  You will see them in the back of school plays, putting out extra chairs at a school concert, helping pick up trash after the football game, visiting classrooms, riding school buses, attending PTO meetings, speaking at civic organizations about the importance of education, seen at the public library, and making sure every school has the best teachers he or she can find.  Rewards will be given to teachers and students.  Education is like religion the pay off is only at the end.