When I became a teacher twenty years ago, I wanted to change the world. Little did I know that in order to do that I, myself, would have to keep changing in it. That was easy to do in my early years of teaching. I was young and relentlessly fought to bring new ideas to the classroom. If there was something new to pilot--I was the one doing so. Yet, somehow over time, it's easy to become comfortable. Eight years ago, I was given the opportunity to change. Frustrated by the lack of homework completed in my English class, I asked my students--all eleventh grade boys--what I could do to get them to do their homework. Daniel, a student in my class, raised his hand. With a smile forming in the corner of his mouth, he said, "You know, Mrs. Pace, we would start doing our homework if you Tweeted it." I sighed. Quite honestly, I had no idea what Twitter was or how to use it. As far as I was concerned a tweet was a sound a bird made but nothing more. Why couldn't my students just write down their homework that was posted the board? I was not about to engage in social media with these kids. I didn't even have Facebook. Twitter was out of the question. My students continued to forget their homework, but I didn't have to connect with them on a platform that made me feel uncomfortable. I sort of saw it as a win-win situation.
Fast forward to last year, and a student raised his hand in my classroom one afternoon. "You know, Mrs. Pace, it would be great to have a classroom Twitter account." I suddenly was brought back to eight years ago when Daniel asked me smugly to create a Twitter account to remind them of their homework. Any time a student starts with, "You know, Mrs. Pace..." I've learned it's not a good path to go down. So, when asked again about the Twitter account, "No way" were the first two words that came to mind. Yet, somehow in a weak moment, those kids convinced me that Twitter would be a good idea. And so @theoryofpace began. I had high hopes to share articles for my students to read and chat with them about books they read or ask them good classroom discussion questions on the literature we were studying. Yet, what materialized was something different and something completely unexpected. I started to build relationships with my students.. I posted what we were doing in class; I tweeted what they said in Socratic seminars. I got them excited to come to class the next day through tweets that gave them a taste of what we would be doing. I used it as a platform for my blog I write for my students. I continued to tweet in the summer about my adventures. I asked former students this year for advice for my new students; they gladly obliged. My students grew to know my love of the Beatles and my hatred for emojis and Taco Bell. And I learned about their world. And what I realized most of all is this is the world our students are living in. We can either embrace that world or we can remain on two separate planets. We can either change or remain standing in the same place. We can either embrace innovation or we can watch the chasm between our students and us grow larger.
Innovation is more than important in today's classrooms. Innovation is necessary if we want to engage our students. In chapter one of The Innovator's Mindset, George Couros states that "relationships are at the crux of everything we do" (10). Perhaps had I used Twitter as a means to post homework assignments, those students would have started doing their homework or even better, I would have built stronger relationships with them."Change is an opportunity to do something amazing" (10). If we remain the same teachers we were eight years ago, we prevent ourselves from doing amazing things. We need to change even from the day before. I'm still that young girl who wants to change the world in her teaching. Only now, I feel like it's possible because I'm changing with the world...one Tweet at a time.
Fast forward to last year, and a student raised his hand in my classroom one afternoon. "You know, Mrs. Pace, it would be great to have a classroom Twitter account." I suddenly was brought back to eight years ago when Daniel asked me smugly to create a Twitter account to remind them of their homework. Any time a student starts with, "You know, Mrs. Pace..." I've learned it's not a good path to go down. So, when asked again about the Twitter account, "No way" were the first two words that came to mind. Yet, somehow in a weak moment, those kids convinced me that Twitter would be a good idea. And so @theoryofpace began. I had high hopes to share articles for my students to read and chat with them about books they read or ask them good classroom discussion questions on the literature we were studying. Yet, what materialized was something different and something completely unexpected. I started to build relationships with my students.. I posted what we were doing in class; I tweeted what they said in Socratic seminars. I got them excited to come to class the next day through tweets that gave them a taste of what we would be doing. I used it as a platform for my blog I write for my students. I continued to tweet in the summer about my adventures. I asked former students this year for advice for my new students; they gladly obliged. My students grew to know my love of the Beatles and my hatred for emojis and Taco Bell. And I learned about their world. And what I realized most of all is this is the world our students are living in. We can either embrace that world or we can remain on two separate planets. We can either change or remain standing in the same place. We can either embrace innovation or we can watch the chasm between our students and us grow larger.
Innovation is more than important in today's classrooms. Innovation is necessary if we want to engage our students. In chapter one of The Innovator's Mindset, George Couros states that "relationships are at the crux of everything we do" (10). Perhaps had I used Twitter as a means to post homework assignments, those students would have started doing their homework or even better, I would have built stronger relationships with them."Change is an opportunity to do something amazing" (10). If we remain the same teachers we were eight years ago, we prevent ourselves from doing amazing things. We need to change even from the day before. I'm still that young girl who wants to change the world in her teaching. Only now, I feel like it's possible because I'm changing with the world...one Tweet at a time.
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