Starting From the Beginning

A former boss once gave everyone in my department a framed quote that was individually picked for each of us upon her retirement.  The quote chosen for me was "Everything you do, you do with the child in mind."  From the time I started teaching I always considered how it would play out for the learners.  They were the reason I was there in the classroom.  Years later, when conversations with my colleagues began to center on what is best for learners, it just made sense to me.  This is what educators should focus on in the classroom.

Fast forward to this past winter, a colleague, Sunny,  was excited to share with me a book she had recently read that we both firmly believed in the message, The Innovator's Mindset by George Couros.  The message of empowering educators to lead change in their learning environments in order to push learners to think and be creative!  I get excited just thinking about it again!  We discussed how we wanted to spread this message to our circle of influence, our campus.

Around this same time we also heard about Teacher2Teacher #WhyITeach.  We thought there was a strong connection of having educators share their story as to why they began teaching with how transforming their classroom environment would best meet the needs of their learners.

From these resources and conversations a series of Leading Innovative Change began!  The series would focus on the 8 characteristics of an Innovator's Mindset, directly from the book.  Each week we would present a characteristic with some type of discussion while modeling a technology tool educators could then use with learners in their learning environments.   And so our journey began.

Our first session focused on introducing the series to our audience.  We shared the concept of #WhyITeach, had all the participants create their own story bubbles, and tweet their stories.  It was a very successful session.  There were a few individuals who were unable to participate on the particular day and made their way to the room later in the week to share their story!

It is important to me to also encourage educators to share the story of what is happening on our campus and connect with other educators to build their own PLN.  We encouraged the educators to share tweets using #cmswconnects.  We also encouraged educators to follow #tcea16.  TCEA is the Texas Computer Education Association conference highly attended!  It is a great place to learn!  It is a great way to connect, either virtually or in person!

The particular tool we wanted to focus on for this conversation was TweetDeck.  I showed educators how using a tool such as TweetDeck allows you the flexibility to follow individuals or hashtags on twitter.  We spent time setting up accounts and searching different hashtags for different areas of interest.  

Leading change had begun.  We were off and running.  Where would this path go?  We didn't know.  Who would jump at the opportunities to make changes in their learning environments?  We didn't know.  We had hope!  Hope is a great place to start.