Emily, Sue, and I have definitely ended up on a “road less traveled” with this project, and I could not be happier. Our “lesson implementation” certainly had a large audience; we were overjoyed when DPI sent out our survey in its very own email (did you see it? did you see it??). Over 3,700 teachers responded, with over 2,800 useable survey responses.

Therefore, the implementation went better than we could have dreamed. I remember us last summer, fighting tooth and nail to get the survey taken seriously, and we succeeded: it was taken seriously by both DPI and teachers across the state. Not only that, but it is a solid instrument; as we were going through it last night, we realized that every single question showed data that told a story. We will be able to use this story to make solid conclusions about what teachers want from DPI and the state testing program.

Right now we are in the midst of the heavy lifting—using the data analysis to develop a presentation for DPI. Each of us has spent hours pouring over every single word teachers across the state have written us.

p.s.—and this blog is private to Kenan Fellows, right???—DPI just sent out a survey to all NC teachers…..and I think ours is totally more awesome 😀 To be fair, we did spend all summer on it…

Due to having teacher friends from a wide variety of school and meeting Kenan fellows from across the state, I am aware that districts, schools, and individual teachers have a different comfort level when it comes to social media. What is clear is that it is not going away. Districts, schools, teachers, and students therefore have the responsibility to clarify what is and is not acceptable use of social media in an educational setting.

I realized I didn’t actually know our school district’s policy about social media (yikes), so I looked it up. Below are some of the highlights from “CCPS Policy 7335: Employees and Social Media,” which you can access in full here:

“School personnel may use only school-controlled technological resources and social media tools to communicate directly with students… An employee seeking to establish a social networking website for school-related purposes must have prior written approval from the superintendent or designee and principal…Employees are prohibited from knowingly communicating with current students through a personal social network page…”

These rules leave me with more questions than answers. Which social media tools are considered “school controlled”? Would me developing a WordPress blog for my students to check homework need written approval from my principal? What about teachers who have students follow them on Twitter? Even if teachers use a professional Twitter account, students are still using personal accounts, so does that violate the rule?

In the name of willingness to “try new things” (but still working within the vague parameters of our county’s policy), I came up with an idea for my own social media test flight. With one of my classes, I introduced a “class discussion board.” Students could post questions about homework/assessments, comments, additional resources, etc. I would monitor the board from time to time, but would not participate. It was supposed to encourage the development of a class community.

Unfortunately, right after I announced its existence, I went through what I now see as a ridiculously lengthy list of extensively punitive rules. Do NOT use the discussion board to complain about the class. Do NOT reveal homework answers. Do NOT blah blah blah. If you do ANY OF THESE THINGS EVEN ONCE YOU WILL BE BANNED FROM THE DISCUSSION BOARD.

This apparently scared the crap out of all my students and the discussion board pretty much looked like this:

So I tried again. I changed the purpose of the board: students would use it to post interesting resources connecting with our class material—news stories, videos, comics, etc. I guess they decided that they did not have to fear my wrath if they accidentally revealed a homework answer, because they discussion board began to look like this:

Baby steps.

New Year’s Resolution: complete the two blog posts I missed a while back 🙂

Thinking back (way back, it seems) to that October PD….I wish I could have another one! Maybe one this spring? Pretty please? Just kidding. October’s PD really came at the perfect time; I remember receiving a scary graph at one of my first-year-teacher meetings that illustrated beginning teachers’ feelings about their job at various times in the year. I don’t know how “scientific” it is, but I did find the same graph on several sites, so that makes it scientific, right…?

Even though this is specific to first-year teachers, I feel it applies to the veteran teachers I know as well. As the graph shows, we start off the year strong, then our lowest point (“disillusionment,” yikes!) occurs around October/November. So really, by having a PD in October, Kenan chose the exact right time to take us away from the classroom for a second and get us pumped up.

Courtesy of Ellen Moir from the New Teacher Center, although I have seen this graph many times over the years.

The October PD marked a stark contrast in my year. Just a little over a week later, my father passed unexpectedly at the age of 63. This was at the exact time that a big part of our project (the implementation of the statewide survey) was supposed to be happening, but as the Scottish poet Robert Burns said, “the best laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.” As a result of having to leave school for almost two weeks to help my family, I have had to cut back on so much of what I wanted to accomplish this year, including withdrawing from National Boards. However, I have kept moving forward with the project, and happily, we have experienced success with the survey implementation (almost 4,000 responses!!! ahh!!!!) and have great plans for our next steps.

I talked to my father a lot about the Kenan research project and sought his advice with it. As a man of science raising a bunch of humanities-oriented kids, he was beyond thrilled that I was doing something so….science-y. With all the hard work still left to go on this project–writing up a manuscript for publication, putting together presentations and an FAQ for DPI–it is nice to have the comfort that me doing this meant something to him.