Twitter PLN

I have been a twitter person for eons but I have started using it to grow my professional learning network in the past few years. I find that twitter allows us teachers to come out of our silos and see how others work, engage and teach. I have found that it has opened my world to many like-minded education people and allowed me to share in the learning of others. But I think the most amazing thing has been the ODD connections.

One of my best connection has been the oddest. You see I am a STEAM secondary teacher and my greatest collaborating partner is a grade 1/2 teacher in Victoria. You see Stella (@stellafleming23) and I are the odd couple because we work at totally different age levels. She is elementary and I am secondary but it works in the twitter world. We both can comment and give ideas to the other as to where to go next with our students learning. We were lucky to connect thru a mutual fritter (twitter friend) @RosePillay1.

One day I saw a tweet from Stella about a science topic and i suggested a video on my classes balloon launch for her group to watch. They did and the next thing I knew, they were launching balloons to me the balloon lady in Sechelt. It may seem odd but it is true, students at all ages can look at the same topics just at different levels.

We as educators really should be looking at how we can work together across all levels of school. I believe it would be a better school if we in high school taught discovery style like they do in elementary. My students are always jumping to decide what their learning will look like, whether its art, discovery, games, nature based or even reading corner. My senior science and math classes are based on fun which leads to learning just like elementary schools do.

So please remember when you are setting up pro-ds or group meetings, we are all teachers and we can help each other no matter the specialty area or grade. And as high school teachers, we need to look to our elementary grades to see why learning was fun and enjoyable before and apply that to our classes.