Inquiry Roadmap

Thus far, I’ve taken a lot from this first part of the partnership week. My road map is full of “stops” representing all of the wonderful writing activities that we’ve done. At each stop I’ve had different questions that have caused me to stop and ask questions about my own teaching practice and the process of a writer.

Blogging to Retain Teachers?

Today’s Murray Card activity really got me thinking about how we approach teacher retention through professional development and connections. In my discussion with Steve, I started by explaining what my past experiences taught me about the need for a positive environment in the classroom (for both teachers and students). As we talked, I thought about how many people leave our profession discontent. I also thought about what was “ranted” about…particularly the need for teachers to hold each other accountable. I thought about the fact that there are some (very few) bad teachers who never seem to be held accountable, who never grow as professionals and who add to the negativity of the school building. This got me thinking further about how these teachers often are the ones that dominate the school culture…sometimes they’re the mentors who hammer in classroom management, diluting our job to nothing more than guards who control behavior.

Steve’s conversation and his own writing then got me thinking about where can teachers go to hash out new ideas and feel validated for trying to be innovative. The answer (possibly)–blogs. Teacher blogs are so awesome, I think of www.freetech4teachers.com, a website my husband showed me, that is all about innovative technology in the classroom. I think about how excited it is being in a professional development where great ideas are being churned out, and how exciting it is to get a new activity for the classroom. That’s what keeps people in our profession, and that’s what makes our profession important and relevant. We come up with new ideas all the time, but sometimes we don’t share them–because when we do we get told all of the bad things from the negative nancy’s in our school.

I’m interested to think about how the mass increase of social media will impact the teaching profession–and by this I mean helping teacher stay innovative and excited. How can blogs help create a more connected community that works together in a positive way?

Here’s something I’ve been playing with to visualize my thinking: http://Pixton.com/ic:v6959nqt