Today was my third personal training session at the gym I joined. It was my fifth day in a gym in the last three weeks. And I am so sore and tired and I just want to curl in a ball.

And it makes me think of our students who are learning English. For many it is not a second language, but a third one. For some this is the first time they have been exposed to the language in any meaningful way.

I marvel at their resilience. I’m overwhelmed by  5 days over a span of 16 days. These students of ours are pushed way harder all without complaint.

I need to never complain again, and then go and give every student in the building a high five and tell them how proud I am of their hard work and disciple.

Reading through my evaluation document, I found 7 topics which I am supposed to “promote and support.” Here are the seven.

1. Instructional Technology Applications
2. Best Practices
3. Standards
4. Regulations
5. Guidelines
6. Resources
7. Procedures

My goal is to organize my thoughts around those seven items. When I am coaching, advertising, supporting, and leading it should be around those seven topics.

Subject Line

Subject lines are the worst. The US Army has a standard start to their subject line which I am going to incorporate this year.

• Keywords:
  • ACTION – Compulsory for the recipient to take some action
  • SIGN – Requires the signature of the recipient
  • INFO – For informational purposes only, and there is no response or action required
  • DECISION – Requires a decision by the recipient
  • REQUEST – Seeks permission or approval by the recipient
  • COORD – Coordination by or with the recipient is needed

• And a few more that I am adding
  • Question: I have a question I need an answered
  • Meeting: Can we set up a meeting?
  • Maybe more?

After that I am trying to come up with a standard convention to help me look for stuff afterwards.

The First Line

I am going put in a “Bottom Line” in my email.  The US Army above refers to it as a BLUF, Bottom Line Up Front. It is the essential core message of the email.

So, in theory an email from me might look like . . .

Subject:  Coordinate: SOL Training Meeting for March 2018

Body: Bottom Line: Please use the Link To Doodle to select a meeting time for SOL Training

Hi,

So we need to get together to plan out our first meeting for the SOL Training. Rather than emailing back and forth, lets use the website Doodle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I talked about looking at the criteria in which I am evaluated. The other part of that document is the standards on which I am evaluated.  So, under the standard of “Professional Knowledge” the first standard is . . .

• 1.1 Demonstrates knowledge and skills relevant to his/her position.

There are a lot of ways I could “demonstrates knowledge and skills relevant to the position.” There are a lot of ways I could “demonstrate knowledge.” I could sit with my principal and discuss all the relevant knowledge I possess.  But, the criteria explains how I should accomplish that standard.

So, I need to demonstrate my knowledge by

• Promoting and supporting the understanding of current FCPS instructional technology applications.
• Promoting and supporting the FCPS Program of Studies, Virginia Standards of Learning, Technology Integration Standards and school, region and division wide goals (standards).
• Promoting and supporting the understanding of best practices in teaching with instructional technology
• Identifying and implementing instructional technology strategies to meet various learning styles of adult learners and their students.

Which in my notes to myself I shortened this.

I need to demonstrate my knowledge by

• Promoting and Supporting
  • ED Tech Applications
  • Standards
  • Best Practices
• AND, coaching this in a way that meets various learning styles.

For the demonstrating knowledge standard I was thinking of a three part solution.

1. A Google Site which contains information on ED Applications, Standards, and Best Practices and where to find more on the county sites.
2. Regular Tech Posts in our Staff Communication Forum about those three, with references back to the Google Site
3. Being In CLT meetings to promote one and two

So, one standard down and only 44 more to go. I have a large spreadsheet (which I am now referring to as “The Map.” Each line is a standard with the appropriate criteria for approaching and evaluating that standard.

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Last week I talked about my goals for Twitter. I wanted to give an update.

• Every day do these 4 types of tweets
  • Ask a Question: I did not ask a question every day.
  • Post a resource: I think I just about posted a resource every day.
  • Respond to someone: Totally responded to someone every day.
  • tweet something personal who speaks to who you are: I think I did
• Engage weekly in one Twitter chat: Nope
• Share this blog on Twitter: Nope

Working backwards, I am not ready to share this Blog to the world yet. I’ll get there, maybe in a month or two, but I am not there yet.

And I still have trouble with Twitter Chats. I know a few people who are into them, maybe I should reach out for support.

As for the tweets, the trouble I have is making something I am proud of. I do not want to tweet to tweet. The worst tweets I read are aggrandizing and vapid. The best tweets I read are thoughtful, brave, and often have a sense of vulnerability.

I am not there yet, but I am working on it. This will be my week to engage in a Twitter chat.

I’ve been doing this job a few years now, but I’ve recently realized I have not been doing the right job. If I left tomorrow, I think people would miss me. And I think I have helped people, but I do not think I have helped people grow into better teachers.

What Should I be Doing

This year I’ve started looking at the evaluation document for my job. I took all the key words from the rubric (see an example below) and categorized them.

Together there were 31 criteria. Looking at the verbs from measures there were a few patterns. I would break my job into 4 categories.

• Coach (12 criteria)
• Advertise (8 criteria)
• Lead (8 criteria)
• Support (3 criteria)

Here are some of the nouns ¹ related to those criteria.

• Advertise: IT Applications, Standards, Best Practices, Resources, Law and Policy
• Coach On: Design Instruction, Best Practices, Training Effectiveness, Self-Improvement, Self-Assessment, Equality, Engagement, Professionalism, Learning Plans
• Lead About: Best Practices, Learning Goals, Resources and Schedules, Ongoing Learning, Staff Development, Digital Citizenship, Professionalism
• Support For: Use of Technology, Collaboration, Assessment Strategies.

How much time should I spend on each category of my job? The County says that 12 of the 31 criteria in my job relate to coaching, so I am going to say I should try to spend that fraction on my day on coaching activities.  In hours per week that is . . .

• Coach (16 Hours, 3 per day)
• Advertise (10 Hours, 2 per day)
• Lead (10 Hours, 2 per day)
• Support (4 Hours, 1 per day)

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Footnotes

1. Not all of these are nouns. (Now I know how Alanis Morissette feels)

People often talk about having revelations in the shower.

My revelation time seems to be 3:00. If I am lost in my own thoughts and can’t get it together, I find that I’ll often come back to it around 3:00 and find something useful.

Today I spent almost 5 hours thrashing on a project. I felt like I was just stuck. At 3:00 I returned to it and saw what I was missing.

3:00 is my shower time.

Previously I talked about organizing and trying to make things more streamlined. I made headphone wraps for each testing headphone to reduce the amount of time spent cleaning up headphones.

It did not work. People did not wrap the headphones correctly, so I still spent about an hour after each testing window cleaning up.

So, I tried this instead. With a cardboard box and hot glue gun I put together a small box that had 5 individual spaces for headphones. If they did not get wrapped correctly, it did not matter as much, because it would not get tangled.

This worked much better. With the bright blue headphone wraps it was easy to identify which were testing headphones which needed to be replaced. And the boxes made it easy to put back in the right place.

 

One of my goals this year is to be more of a connected educator.  I have been reading “What Connected Educators Do Differently” by Whitaker, Casas, and Zoul.  There is a lot in there, some of which I have already made progress on.  Here are some things that resonated when I read them.

On Twitter

• Every day do these 4 types of tweets
  • Ask a Question
  • Post a resource
  • Respond to someone
  • tweet something personal who speaks to who you are
• Engage weekly in one Twitter chat
• Share this blog on Twitter

I’ll do a Friday Check in on Twitter to share how I am doing in this goal.