Skip to main content

Steep Learning Curve Ahead


Wow!  I started in Castleberry ISD fourteen days ago.  I came to the district feeling confident because I used a lot of the same curricular resources and data management programs.  I still feel pretty good about that.  What I feel inadequate about is where I am technology wise.

I guess I've been hiding in a rock somewhere.  I've heard of people using social media and a variety of technology to communicate and learn, but I hadn't explored any of that at all.  Well, guess what?  I have no choice now.  Right away, I joined my colleagues in a Digital Leadership academy.  At the end of my first day there, I had Tweeted, blogged, and build a Weebly (webpage) for the first time!

I'm thankful that I have the chance to learn how to do all of this in context so that it is meaningful for my role and my content area.  The teachers of the group have been great in modeling a program or strategy, then giving us time to practice immediately with people all around the room who can help.

So, be nice to me while I step out and explore and experiment.  And just watch me get better!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Digital Leadership - Chapter 11: Discovering Opportunity

I just joined the Castleberry ISD team as ELA Director a week and a few days ago, so I’m a little behind in the Digital Leadership game.  I’m going to dive right in and absorb everything I can.  Unfortunately, in my last positions and districts all things technology were mostly buzz words with no real training about how to use it best.  That being said, I am thankful to start learning how to really be involved in digital leadership and am excited about the opportunity to learn with my colleagues. My first task is to read chapter 11 of Digital Leadership by Eric Sheninger and blog about it.   This is my first blog, so be kind to me!   The title of the chapter is “Discovering Opportunity” and the first thing I did was flip through to see what the subtitles.   I found things like, “strategic partnerships”, “university partnerships”, “intraschool partnerships”, and “corporate/community partnerships”. Immediately I made a connection to the communit...

Teaching the Writer vs Teaching the Composition

I have always felt very strongly about teaching students skills that they will actually use in the real world and helping them to develop into a wonderfully well-rounded person.  Now that I'm a mom of a two year old, my feelings about that have intensified. In teaching young students, my number one goal is creating a literate, thinking person; one who can read and write for a variety of purposes, including enjoyment.  Somehow, in our endeavors to reach certain state and national standards we have lost sight of that. Although we have testing standards we have to reach, that must remain the secondary goal for us as we plan instruction.  We must first foster a love for reading and writing and develop deep comprehension and thinking in each.  After that is established, we can show our students to how the concepts and strategies we have taught them will translate into a test.  We can teach them the "test genre", but only after we have established a solid fou...

3 Important Aspects of Independent Reading

In Elementary classes this year, we have made Read to Self (Independent Reading) a priority.  We know from decades of research that one of the simplest and most effective way to increase reading skills is to increase the amount of time students spend reading.  We have no control of how much our students read at home, but we are able to give them opportunities to read at school. In grades Kindergarten through 5th grade, students are building stamina in independent reading.  By the time students are in the middle of third grade, we hope to have them really engaged in independent reading for 20 minutes per day.  I hope that in Middle School and High School we can find creative ways to carve out independent reading time as well. Time Matters  Check this graphic out to see the correlation between the minutes a student reads and his/her achievement on standardized tests:                         ...