Reflections of an Educator

Today was a great day at work. I had the opportunity to work with a fellow educator, one of the most intelligent and thoughtful educators with whom I have ever worked. Through some supportive pressure and encouragement, he finally agreed to let me introduce Twitter as an educational tool. It was a risk to do so, and he trusted me enough to take a leap. Before my wonderful colleague @DelEdTech and I jumped in to the nuts and bolts of Twitter, we paused – and talked about the why . Why bother to connect? Why bother to share our edu-thoughts through social media? We found ourselves getting increasingly excited with our colleague, discussing the why behind being a connected educator. As educators, we are so excited to continue learning, share our learning, reflect on our learning and discover new resources, it is important to stop to pause and think about the WHY behind being a connected educator. What made today such a wonderful day at work is that I was reminded that we are all lifelong ...

When I arrived at my school two years ago, I inherited an outdated and incomplete ed eval system, which included a negative culture and many assumptions around what the ed eval process could be, is and is not. As Massachusetts rolled out an updated and revised system over the past few years, I worked to form relationships with teachers and not just tell them, but show them, that the ed eval process can be a productive and effective tool – not something to be feared or to dread. Over the course of the last two years, I have worked to form relationships with teachers; I have worked to make a required process as positive and productive use of time as possible. Since this is something that needs to get done as per Massachusetts state law, why not make the best of it and use the time and tools to improve student learning and teacher instruction? This is, after all, a teacher's educator evaluation - so I find it imperative to engage educators in their evaluation process to ensure owners...