Summer Break

I think one of the bigger myths out there is that educators get a lot of time off.  While it is nice that we have some time off in the summer to recharge our batteries, it’s also true that the summer time isn’t just sitting around doing nothing.  All the districts I have worked for have required some amount of professional development hours to be obtained over the summer and usually there are random things that need to happen over the summer (ie – curriculum writing, leading trainings, interviews, etc.).  By no means am I complaining especially since my whole family is off during this time, but it did strike me odd how I personally torpedo any chance of a restful, school-absent summer break.

The main way I do this is because I generally enjoy presenting and training educators.  It’s one of the main reasons I moved out of the classroom and into my current role.  I love sharing my knowledge with others and this also forces me into my next way to take up summer break.

There are some trainings that only happen during the summer.  My district offers a handful of these and many outside entities offer summer professional development.  I started the Google Certified Coach curriculum this summer because they recommended completing a large portion of it before the school year started.  I need to be constantly learning and engaging in new learning opportunities so I can continue to push the faculty at my school and be prepared for creative solutions to problems.

Lastly, there is one sentence that keeps me up some nights thinking about…”it’s what’s best for kids”.  The students at my state/district/school deserve the best most prepared educators.  My small contribution to this is making sure the teachers and administration have the most competent, well prepared version of me they can.

I think that last reason is why most teachers became teachers in the first place.  To do what’s best for kids.

End of the School Year

Based on the dates of my posts, you can see that the end of the school year was a bit of a busy time.  With faculty and students on six different campuses, a lot of my time was spent driving and putting out fires only to leave and repeat at another campus.

I’m really proud of the way my campus handled the adversity of this spring semester.  We had a lot going on and we stuck with it and persevered.

Looking back on my participation in the spring semester, I found that I was running around and lacked focus in some areas.  It’s to be expected, but I think I neglected to slow down and “enjoy” what was going on around me sometimes.  I was so busy getting things done that I didn’t spend time talking and building relationships with the staff on my campuses.  There was always a good reason for me to not spend more time (the pursuit of getting things done), but I wish I had been more intentional with my time.

I’m ready to get back on to one campus next year, but I’m not sorry that I went through this year.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to look back and gain perspective on difficult times in the future.  I’ll be able to learn and grow from what we went through.  Isn’t that the ultimate point of difficulty?  Learning from the struggle.

Videos, videos, videos

One of the really cool parts of my new job is being surrounded by opportunities.  One of the opportunities I’ve had is being able to take what our school has done in the past and try and improve it slightly.  The hope is to make things run more smooth and efficiently for everyone.  I’ve found during the first semester on the job, I’ve found one of the easiest ways to communicate effectively is to use a video to show rather than tell.

Maybe this is how I’ve gotten the nickname “the video guy” but it seems to me that I’d always rather see things than be told things.  A video has the added benefit of being able to rewind and watch again.  Knowing what needs to be in a video is the biggest challenge.

Some of the types of videos I’ve gotten to create this year include screencasts, instructional videos, and even some drone footage!  It has been a learning experience, but it sure has been fun!

New Position

As I was finishing up my Master’s degree this fall, I was given an opportunity to leave the classroom and take a new position in the front office of my school.  The position is a Digital Learning Specialist and it has been a great change and has afforded me a lot of new opportunities.

This position is essentially supporting the teachers of four schools (my middle school and its three feeder elementary schools).  I’m helping train them on district supported technologies, solving software issues, and generally making sure they are supported in the classroom.

This position is not a a teaching position, meaning I don’t see students all the time at my school.  This has come with pros and cons, some of which are unexpected.  I miss building relationships with students in the classroom.  It’s fun to have inside jokes and learn from students in my classroom.  On the other hand, this has allowed me to meet and interact with a lot of people who I would not normally come into contact with.  For instance, I’ve had more interactions with parents this year than almost any other year in education.

I was initially worried about the amount of elementary campuses I would be on, but they have been super warm and welcoming.  I have really enjoyed helping out the elementary students and working with teachers that have a completely different set of issues that I’m used to.  They tend to look at problems in completely different ways and it’s been an interesting new perspective to take into account.

This year has been great.  It has challenged me in a variety of ways and I think I needed some of that in my life.  Being in a classroom is predictable (as much as middle schoolers can be predictable) and shaking things up and try out something new has been great for me.  From time-to-time I’m going to be sharing my projects I’ve worked on here, so stay tuned!

2020 Goals Review

At the beginning of 2020 I came up with a list of goals that I’d like to try and get done.  Little did I know how this year would get turned on its head just a few months later.  With that being said, let’s take a look at how I did this last year.

Professional Goals:

  • Finish my Master’s Degree with a 4.0 – This happened!  I thought for sure I would have one class that I didn’t make an ‘A’ in, but I was able to pull it off.  The last semester was a close call.  If you’re interested in Instructional Technology, I highly recommend the Texas A&M program…but I’m biased.
  • Develop a 1-year and 5-year plan for my career – I started work on this, but my plans had a curveball thrown at them when I changed jobs and some of the items on my plan were taken care of.  A post on this is in the works if you’re interested in my job change.
  • Find 1 mentor to continue my development – This particular goal was when I thought I was predicting a career change outside of K-12 education.  While this may happen at some point, this goal has changed significantly since the beginning of the school year.

Personal Goals:

  • Read 1 book per month (not degree related) – I started off strong on this one.  I believe I made it until August, but have since fallen off the wagon.
  • Cut my screen time – This goal was difficult for me during the quarantine.  I feel like I managed as best I could, but I don’t know if the numbers would bear out a decrease in screen time.
  • Develop one tradition with each of my children – This was a fun experience.  I think we’ve gotten to a good spot of traditions with my children.  My son and I have Cub Scouts to bond over (I am an Eagle Scout) and my daughter and I have bonded over a love for cooking.  

Overall, I could have done better with my goals, but it was fun trying new things and learning as this crazy year went on.

Transitions in Teaching

I am not going to pretend that we all don’t know what is happening in the world right now.  The Corona Virus is changing a lot about our world right before our eyes.  This includes the way we are teaching and learning and there was not much of a learning curve.

I feel like there are two types of educators in the world right now:

  1. Educators who are comfortable learning new ways of teaching and adapting instruction to include new methodologies and technologies to meet the needs of the learners in class.
  2. Educators who are struggling  because they have always done things certain ways and are either struggling to change or unwilling to change.

I would like to think I can include myself in the former category.  I have always tried to be the person that would be the guinea pig for new technologies in my classroom.  To be fair, this has contributed to the greying of my hair at times, but I’ve learned what I could and moved on.

The world changed quickly during the month of March and there were definitely teachers out there who could not cope with the change.  The question that I’ve been pondering over the past couple of weeks is:

Whose fault is it that teachers can’t cope with change?

Is it the teacher’s fault?  Is it their supervisor’s fault?  Is it their employer’s fault?  Is it society’s fault?

I’m not sure that I have any answers to this question, but it something I’ve had a lot of time to ponder these questions in the past few weeks.  Hopefully in the coming months educators, in general, are going to be prepared to change multiple times because of all the uncertainty caused by our current global situation.

E-Learning Using Adobe Captivate

One thing I’m really trying to focus on in my master’s coursework are practical skills that will add to my future endeavors.  I was presented with an opportunity to take a course on e-learning design and knew that it was a skill that could be beneficial so I jumped at the chance to take it.

We used Adobe Captivate in this class, so I dove into that world.  Our graduate assistant said that it is “Powerpoint 2.0” and while I can see some similarities, Captivate is a totally different beast.  On top of coming up with a topic, doing the needs assessment, and producing the content I had to meet with my group regularly and deal with being quarantined due to the Corona Virus.  It was a wild semester, but I think that I produced an e-learning module that I am proud of.  I want to continue to refine my knowledge of Captivate and produce some more modules over the coming months.  If you’re interested in see what I came up with, the link is right here.

Genius Hour: Photoshop Part 2

My project is turned in and I am awaiting a grade for it.  With it behind me I feel like I can speak on how I did.  One quick aside, Corona Virus decided to make it’s global debut right in the middle of the project so I didn’t get to finish as much as I would like to.

I feel like I did way better at figuring out Photoshop than I thought I might before I started.  I knew I could learn the program, it was my mindset that was going to hold me back in this project.  What I found as I went along was that if I had an assignment or a task to complete it was not hard for me to make it happen.  However, on the projects where I needed to come up with something from scratch I often needed some inspiration.  Overall, I feel like I have a good working knowledge of Photoshop and how to use it.

My evidence is in my portfolio which can be found here.  I’m excited to be able to put up some original work and show off what I learned.  As I mentioned above, there is still learning to be done so I’ll be able to finish that up during the summer.

Genius Hour: Photoshop Part 1

One of the projects that I have been assigned in my graduate school program is a genius hour.  In short, it is a time set aside for me to work on a topic skill that I have self selected.  The only specific in this case was that it had to be associated with Educational Technology.  I chose to learn a skill that I have thought about in the past, but never fully understood.  I am learning Adobe Photoshop.

I won’t bore you with the procedural details like how I am learning it, what my end product will be, etc.  Instead I wanted to catalog what I am learning  and how it applies to future endeavors.

My main takeaway so far with Photoshop is that I can learn the skills but my weakness is my creative mindset.  I am enough of a tinkerer that I can figure out most programs relatively quickly.  There are some specific quirks to Photoshop that I am learning on the fly and getting frustrated with at times, but those are few and far between.  When I struggle the most is when I lack inspiration for what to create or modify.  The course that I am walking through suggests some practice exercises.  They are trying to leave them general enough to fit anyone’s interests, but I sometimes have a hard time getting started because of no inspiration.

The question for me is how do I build my creative mindset to the point where I do not get frustrated getting started?   I am assuming this comes down to practice.  So I will endeavor to practice using the creative part of my brain so that I do not get so easily frustrated.

Opportunity

Being given an opportunity to do something is something we should cherish.  We are given the ability that others are not and can either choose to use it to the fullest or not…as my principle would say, “the choice is definitely yours.”  I have been given an opportunity in my graduate school class this semester and I should be thrilled, but I think I am over-thinking it.

Let me start off by saying I love this class and I really enjoy the professor that teaches it.  This project is a blessing and also makes me really nervous.  The basics of the project are to pick a topic or skill that interests you (that loosely fits under the umbrella of ‘Educational Technology’) and study it in depth.  The catch is that it is more than half of my final grade.  These facts lead to both thankfulness and worry all at the same time.

I am thrilled to be able to study something that I would like to.  This project opens a world of possibilities and I love that.  I can choose anything at all.  I am leaning toward developing a skill that I currently do not possess, but would help me in the future.  I am trying to complete my degree with the best possible chance of snagging a job and hitting the ground running.  I get bogged down with this because I start thinking of the opportunity cost of choosing one thing over the other.  If I choose something practical am I giving away the opportunity to learn something else new that is more professional or academic?  Is my methodology in learning something new going to truly benefit me in the future?

This particular project really makes me nervous because in the past I have done better on the week-to-week assignments and struggled a tad with the more major assignments for this particular professor.  With this grade being such a huger percentage of my grade and my GPA being a 4.0 currently, I’m going to get more and more nervous as the semester goes.  This is new for me because I have never been competitive when it comes to grades in higher education until now.