Course 2 accompanied a whirlwind in my personal and professional life, letting PD slip to the back-burner. I felt like giving up.
Luckily, I didn’t.
It wasn’t just me. A global pandemic set us all off course in an unprecedented way. Our lives are still far from pre-COVID normal but the following realizations I’ve made will carry on with me forever.
- Radical educational reform IS possible, ‘school’ can be done differently.
- Stop and appreciate what you have, especially those you love.
- We are all more interconnected than we think.
Given I was WAY behind the others, it was going to be hard to fulfill the group project element for this final project. I had to creative but also realistic.
At my current school, social media/technology usage and regulations are either an appendix (filled with don’t and avoid) or sparse. (Basically, someone did something bad, and let’s add a line in our handbook so it doesn’t happen again.)
I took this project as a charge to shift the perception of social media usage in the classroom, from the ground up.
Aspirations/ guidelines for my final project:
- Be worded positively
- Encourage continued thought and commitment toward the desired goal.
- Be standards-aligned.
- Be applicable to different subjects in secondary, not just English.
- View social media as an asset instead of a liability to learning
This is what I created with the help of 2 teachers outside of COETAIL, in Mongolia, and 2 cohort members. I will add this agreement to my course outlines for the fall and share it with my colleagues.
Course 2 Final Project- Social Media Agreement