When you do something for four years, there is a learning curve that is pretty standard and predictable. First you have to learn how to do the thing it is you are supposed to do. That can take the better part of the first year to get it right. The second year is spent refining and relearning things and making sure you are doing them right. By the third year, if everything went smoothly, you can start innovating. Taking those things you do and reimaging, remixing them and sometimes even unlearning the things you know to go about them better. And that is just for your personal growth.
The first year you start something like coaching there is the added benefit of establishing relationships, getting out and in front of those you are supposed to be serving, and in many cases proving your bona fides, even though you still may be learning the position as you go.
It was much the same for us who started the journey of “Specialist” in my district four years ago. Sadly, that journey will be ending this week, and all 7 of us are slated to go back to the classroom at the end of the year.
Our first year was riddled with ups and downs like many TOSA jobs, but most of our downs came in the form of union problems. Three days into our jobs, our union submitted a grievance that our positions were not on the pay scale and not in the contract. Never mind that it is firmly stated in our contract that the district reserves the right to establish the scope and duties of jobs in the district. It was a rocky start to what would be an antagonistic view of our positions by our own union. Long story short, our own union cut our days and our pay in that first year, resulting in a cut of just over 20% pay. It left us working 8 hours a day and getting paid like a 6-hour employee. And because we are 8-hour employees, when we train after school, our teachers get pain to attend, but we don’t get paid to give the training. It remains a pain point to the specialists to this day. This isn’t a bitch blog though, so that is the last I will say of that.
Despite the difficulties and hurdles, we have thrived. Our reading specialists got kids reading at grade level by 3rd grade, our PBL specialists implemented district wide PBL in 2 years. And the Tech Integration Specialists (Michael and I) have implemented several programs, have been a part of a districtwide device rollout, trained half the staff on Office365, ran about 100 trainings on various topics (iMovie, Edpuzzle, Flipgrid, powtoons, Sway, thinglink, various LMS trainings, Illuminate, and Code.org just to name a very few). But the two that mean the most to me are definitely the Podcast and the Presenting.
TOSAs Talking Tech was the marriage of an old grant for podcasting equipment and a desire to tell the true and correct story of things going on in BUSD. More than that though was a need to have an on-demand PD place for our teachers. We were training on things that some teachers were not ready to implement yet, but we knew that when the time came, they would be clamoring for it. The podcast was a way to capture some of the content of our trainings and make learning more flexible for our teachers. We knew that not everyone could come to the trainings when they were being given, so how could we make the time of a training flexible or irrelevant? Podcasting was one way we could do this. We did about 10 episodes and got into a groove. After about 20, we checked our stats and found the people that we were doing our podcast for, our district employees, weren’t listening. But other people were. Lots of other people. So, we changed our format. We went for a broader variety of EdTech, not just the Office365 we have at our district. We connected to educators across the state, using the network established by our favorite EdTech peeps, CUE, and started talking about wider and more varied tech. We started interviewing people from the CUE community, from our own community, and our show grew and changed a bit. We discussed EdTech articles from places like Edsurge, Edweek and Medium. We even put out a 4-part series on how to start podcasting. Each week we record and reach out to like-minded educators on things we think they want to know about. It has been a fulfilling and wild ride. Soon, we will hit 100,000 downloads, and it blows my mind that something that started so small can reach so many.
This position has opened up more professional opportunities for me as well. This past year, I presented 12 times on various topics at several EdTech conferences and events. I talk about podcasting and using audio in the classroom, marketing and branding for teachers, social media and telling your story, and lastly Flipgrid and Anchor, and how to use them in your classroom. It is s a different animal presenting in front of a crowd. Being a teacher, you would think that one classroom is just like another, but let me tell you, this is not the case in the EdTech community.
My first training I ever led was for the Santa Clara County office of Education. It was on marketing and branding for teachers, and I called it “The Uncomfortable Art of Selling Yourself.” Silly puns aside, it went well, and forged relationships up and down the state to bring more opportunities for presenting and conference attending. And it cemented my love for teaching teachers. Sure it didn’t go that well, as no first time presentation does, but it quickly transformed into something that I was proud of. I presented that thing three more times, at CapCUE’s techfest, at SGVCUE Innovation Celebration, and at FallCUE. That presentation morphed into a storytelling session, pulled from real life lessons and cut pay. They say it is the burned hand that teaches best, and that burned hand gave me a passion for storytelling and podcasting. Recently, I have been presenting mostly on Audio in the Classroom, on Flipgrid and Anchor, and on WHY teachers need to be their best advocates and authors of the stories being told.
My most memorable and scariest presentation happened this year at CUE. Mike and I were freaking our because we got put in Primrose B, the biggest room besides Oasis 4, where the keynotes are. We laughed about not needed a tenth of the 700 seat capacity. Our session at FallCUE went well, but we maxed the room out at 37 people. If we doubled the attendees, it would be our biggest presentation by far, and those 74 people would be sprinkled in the huge room. I was seriously stressed. We woke up at like 5am, too nervous to sleep more, and set about trying to get breakfast somewhere. We ended up at IHOP, and it was about as horrible as you expect, but the coffee was hot and food warm. We puttered around the room and got our stuff ready, and as we go down to Primrose B, we get intercepted by a friend asking if they moved our room, that our names were not on the digital marquee. Nightmare come to life! We were still scheduled there though, and as we walk in the room, we are greeted by about 400 people, sitting and waiting for our session. I was floored. They must be in the wrong room? We must have been moved? Are you sure you are here for us? First thing I did as the session started was take a 360 photo, because yeah, I needed this on record. And people kept coming in! by the time we were in full swing, there were about 600 people in the room. And only one microphone was working at a time, but we pushed through, finished up, and I felt awesome! We wrapped up the session and had to run to the poster session, but it was easily the best presentation we ever gave. Was it perfect, no, but we got through all the slides, answered questions, and felt like rock stars.
The past four years have been awesome, and while it seems like we were just starting to hit our stride, we are scheduled to go back into the classroom. I’m sad that I don’t get to do what I love in an official capacity anymore, and I feel that some of the initiatives that we are embedded in will likely fail without the constant support we were able to give them, but when the boss speaks, we listen. This last week of school will be hard for me, packing up my office and figuring out where to store thing I won’t need back in my classroom. It will be hard figuring out time to podcast, because that is still something that we want to do, but I don’t know when we will have the time when we go back into the classroom and have planning and grading and teaching on out plates full time. I want to keep presenting, and I will have to find time and funds to be able to do that, because it has become a part of how I am growing professionally. But as for now, and as I sit in the office at 6 am finishing this post, I don’t know what next year will look like, and I have to admit it is scaring me more than a little bit.