So, here I sit, trying to find my people, hoping that I can find a commonality with others to build a community in this social media infused world of ours. Do I think finding my tribe is important? Absolutely. Why? Because it is important for us to be able to learn from one another, spark each other's minds, work through challenges, and be able to grow. So how do I do it? How do I find my tribe? Jeff Goins blogs about Three Important Steps to Building a Killer Tribe. He states the following as these necessary steps,
Step 1: Be as personal as you can be Step 2: Stay relevant to your audience Step 3: Create mouth-watering anticipation I feel like I do all of these things. I am a real, down-to-earth person; I am accessible; and I am not afraid to tell people about my challenges or talk about mistakes I have made. I am talking directly to my audience about something specific, "Teaching What Matters" in the realm of high school education. I am blogging regularly to stay in the game, and I have created my network learning space to attract those who are interested in learning and building on a teaching and learning strategy that is new to many of us, interdisciplinary projects. Now what? I still don't have my people. I feel like my challenge is that I don't know how to get my name out there. I also feel like the only way to really do this is to network in person. Is that the key or is there something else I can do to get my tribe to notice me and build with me? We have great strides to make in the world of education. We need to make learning more relevant and help our students develop work-readiness skills like communication, collaboration, critical thinking, agility, etc. We can do this through project-based learning, problem-based learning, and interdisciplinary projects. Join me in my Google Community: Interdisciplinary Projects in High School.
2 Comments
For the most part, social networking has mostly been a nonstarter for me. When it comes to the use of media in general, I do participate a tiny bit. In my professional life, I find myself using YouTube quite often, whether it is to find a new video to improve my curriculum or to actually create my own novice videos for my students. I also have my students post the videos they create to my YouTube channel for others to view, learn from their stories, and to use as student exemplars. I have also found myself on Pinterest for activity ideas in class for PBL.
My personal life doesn't bring that much more excitement, in fact probably less, as I already mentioned not participating much in the adventure that is social media. My family plans our huge gatherings that way, which is why I sometimes find myself taking at peak at my husbands Facebook account; but other than that, it is just to feel connected from afar since we are so far away from family. Pinterest has also been helpful personally because I was able to get ideas and the plans for a huge play structure I built for my kids over the summer. In addition to the insight into awesome ideas for appetizers and treats, of course. On the complete opposite spectrum, there are my students. As each year passes, I notice that my students get better and better with technology and communicate more and more on social media, definitely more so than me. I have also found their creativity and confidence growing as a result. Since we know that many of them thoroughly enjoy social media, as I watch them constantly checking their phones between passing periods, I would like to find more ways to incorporate that into my curriculum some how. I want them using social media safely, productively, positively, and to their advantage. So far, I am exploring the ideas below: Using social media to... ...raise awareness about social issues that exist in our society and strive for the change they want to see. ...build their professional network through their internships, other jobs, etc. ...gain a more diverse audience for research project survey data ...present their projects/creations/products ...gain feedback and further develop work readiness skills I know this isn't a lot, and I am looking for as many ideas as possible that I can share with my students and help foster their skills in this process. Are there any ideas you may have for how I can incorporate social media into their lives educationally? |
Author
Angelina Valvona-Herndon: a high school teacher, blessed to work with at-risk students striving to succeed in academia and the real world. Archives
October 2019
Categories
All
|