Why Sharing is Essential for Educators

David Geurin makes some great points in this recent Blog Post

8 Ways Sharing Is Essential For Educators

1. It inspires new ideas. When you share something from your classroom with another educator, it might spark a conversation that leads to something new for their classroom. Ideas always build on other ideas, and they get better as we get more input and various perspectives. It's the power of collaboration.

2. It creates a culture of learning and continuous improvement. What you choose to share with others reveals a lot about what you value. By talking about student learning and how to make it better, you are helping support a culture of improvement and keeping the focus on the bottom line, better learning for students.

3. It builds self-efficacy. Sharing good things that are happening is encouraging to self and others. We all want to feel like we have the ability to do our jobs well and make a difference. When you focus on the positive, it gives you a greater sense you can impact your work for the better.

4. Success breeds success. When something is working well, share it. It can give others the confidence and inspiration to replicate what you are doing or build on it. 

5. Sharing pushes your own thinking. When you share with others, you inherently think differently about the idea. It causes you to reflect and consider the audience and what might be important to them. Reflection is extremely important for taking your thinking deeper. We tend to reflect more on things that we are thinking of sharing with others.

6. Taking risks can encourage others to take risks. When you try a new idea in your classroom or do something innovative, there is an element of risk. By sharing this experience with others, they might gain the confidence or inspiration to step out of their comfort zone to try something new. 

7. You might enjoy your work more. I think when teachers share the positive things happening in their classrooms, they feel validated for what they do. Everyone needs to feel noticed and appreciated in their work. It's more likely for this to happen if you reveal some of the neat things that are happening in your classroom.

8. It's too good not to share. When students do something amazing, it's just a shame for it not to be shared outside the classroom. So many things get noticed in our culture that aren't positive. We need to do our part to amplify the best things in the classroom.

Science Instruction in Three Dimensions

Joe Krajcik, a professor of science education, associate dean for research in the School of Education at the University of Michigan. He is also co-director of the Center for Highly Interactive Classrooms, Curriculum, and Computing in Education at the University of Michigan advises educators to think of lesson development as building a balanced meal. In an NSTA blog, he writes:

“I like to apply the analogy of preparing a really great meal to three-dimensional learning. I originally got this idea from Ted Willard from NSTA. I love to cook, so I’ve tried to expand on this analogy.

Think of knowing how to do various techniques in the kitchen like kneading bread, cutting tomatoes, beating an egg, frying or roasting, and so forth as the practices. You could know how to do all of these and still not be able to prepare a really good meal.

Now, think of picking out really good ingredients for the meal. You want to pick out a high-quality piece of fish or poultry or excellent pasta for the meal. These are your core ideas. A disciplinary core idea is essential to explaining a number of phenomena. Your main ingredient is essential to the meal. But just as the DCI works with practices to make sense of phenomena and design solutions, you need to know how to cook that main ingredient.

But something is still missing. The meal tastes bland. What is missing? To make a really good meal, we need to use spices and herbs [crosscutting concepts] to enhance the flavor of the main ingredients. Similarly, to really make sense of phenomena and to design solutions all three dimensions are necessary.

To make a really wonderful meal, good main ingredients are necessary, but you need to know how to use various techniques to prepare them, and you must have the spices and herbs to enhance the flavors. All three work and blend together to make a great meal. Similarly, to foster three-dimensional learning where all learners can make sense of phenomena and design solutions, all three dimensions need to work and blend together.”

Teachers can gain greater understanding of the Framework by reading the overview produced by NSTA. Chapter nine of the Framework provides a detail description of the integration of the three dimensions.

Chapter 9 - Integration of the Three Dimensions

From Maine DOE

Making Connections with Students

Aaron Hogan wrote a thoughtful blog post, "Who's in the Gaps". In this post he challenges teachers to look at their class lists and be able to name one thing they know about each student outside of school - making a list of those that you do not know anything about.

As you identify these interests you can make a plan to engage with these students and make connections. These connections will help you plan lessons that will address those students needs.

Telling the Story of Your Classroom

This week I have read two blog posts about utilizing social media and the Internet to make your classroom more transparent and developing a "brand" for your classroom. If you're not telling the story of what happens in your classroom you allow the story to be told for you. Take charge of that narrative and you'll reap tremendous benefits.

The first post is from TeachThought - Using Social Media to Tell Your Classroom's Story. This post highlights the importance of developing the identity of your classroom. This may sound like "one more thing" to do but it doesn't need to be. The 6th-grade team has done a great job of adding a social media component to what they do by having students responsible for posting to their Twitter feed.

One quote from the TeachThought post that really resonated with me was, "In isolation, your classroom is a mess of learning targets, projects, standards, grades, deadlines, and crowded rosters. But contrast can be revealing. By opening your classroom up to the world, your classroom begins to establish an identity." There are many great things happening in your classrooms on a daily basis - show them to the world.

The second post is from George Couros - How do you Tell Your Story? Couros starts his post with the quote, "Standardized tests do not tell the story of what we do in education." He then questions readers about how they share student learning that goes beyond a number or letter.

At HMS we have started using a Twitter feed to share some of the great things happening on a day to day basis. We have had the News blog for a few years and Bruce Brann and Joan Adler do a great job of providing a deeper view into some of the happenings going on at HMS. These sources along with the school website tell the story of what is going on at HMS.

Many teachers at HMS are utilizing Twitter and blogs to share what going on in their classrooms. Here's a great list of examples:

• 6th Grade Twitter Account
• Megan Rice and Rod Corey Twitter Account
• Gina Rollins' Classroom Blog
• Meghan Haugevik's Classroom Book Blog
• 7th Grade Math and Science Blogs

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