I am currently taking a class for some professional development through Leading Edge called Professional learning leader. It is a great class, and you can hear all about it in episode 21 of TOSAs Talking Tech, but there was a piece of the curriculum that really stood out to me and has been percolating in my mind for about two weeks now, and it was creating my own mission and vision statements.

At first I just looked at this as some assignment I had to do, not really giving it much more thought than any other assignment I had for the course. After all, I am sure many of us have been a part of this process in our districts at some point or another, sitting on committees, arguing about language, going through several drafts of the essentially same message reworking it and eventually flogging it into submission. But as I was going through the process for myself, I began to ask questions that I have never asked myself before, and although I am ashamed to admit it, never really thought of before.

As I began my Vision Quest I started doing more than going through the motions and completing an assignment. I started really thinking deeply about my educational philosophy. Before I could even start to encapsulate my mission and vision into terse prose, I had to think about what I valued about education, and what my goals were for myself as my career develops. After identifing that, I could come back and tackle the mission and vision statements with some clarity and guidance.

I used a this document as guidance, but I skipped to the bottom and hashed out my goals first. What was I doing in education? Where did I want to go? How would I get there? I started on these to help inform my vision. These were pretty easy once I started thinking about them, and committing them to (virtual) paper made them (virtually) real. I had a direction and purpose, and I felt a little bit better about trying to create a bigger idea like my own vision.

As you can see from below, my goals deal with technology and learning. It was a natural step to include those in my vision. Since a vision statement includes both a core ideology (technology/digital citizenship) and an envisioned future (tech for all), I had to sit back and think for a bit on how to fuse those. And when I say “sit back and think” I really moved my chair away from my desk, put on headphones with some background music, closed my eyes and thought about it. I thought long and hard and when I got to that place of Zen (no, it wasn’t a nap, I swear) I sat up, put pen to paper and BOOM, Vision statement.

Technology is an inseparable part of education today, and I will be an exemplar of technology integration, utilizing new and innovative means of collaboration, content creation, and visible learning. My teachers will create, produce, and publish electronically, gaining insight and feedback from peers and teachers alike, and starting to grow their own analog and digital PLNs which will reflect a personal and professional curation of great resources.

I tried not to mess with the original thought, cleaned up some grammar and tense issues, and then vowed not to touch it again for at least a day. Let it ruminate in my thought and see if tomorrow, it still rang true:

When I came back, it was still something I thought represented my core ideology and envisioned future well, so I left it. I moved onto the mission statement from there. I took it as a charge to answer the oft heard question (usually by some union rep or exec. Board member) of why do I exist? Not metaphysically or spiritually, mind you, but in my job and in my capacity of a Technology Integration Specialist, why am I here? Over the past year, and in our new roles,

this question has been circulated widely, and is something that all new TOSAs in our district and beyond plenty of sleepless nights. After thinking about it for over a year, it was pretty easy to answer:

I will bring technology to all teachers in BUSD, meeting teachers at their level and expanding technological horizons of even the most tech-reluctant teacher. I will be a creative force for technology integration, by example and by demonstration, enabling teachers to be more and do more than they ever thought they could.

Lastly I attacked the values. I found that after things and composing a vision and mission, this was not to tough a task. I bent them to my current job and role, because I felt it was important that it reflects both who am I am who I am striving to be. Because of this, they mostly deal with technology and the integration and teaching of tech that I do every day at work. I thought about what I do well (learning technology and integrating it to class use) and what I struggle with (being patient with the tech-phobic). If I could keep in mind those two things and work on letting one help the other, I would be doing OK.  I think they turned out pretty good.

• I will be a digital citizen, and promote digital citizenship in all I do.
• I will positively contribute to all PLN/PLCs I am a part of, learning, growing, and reflecting while sharing my experiences and fostering education, growth and reflection on the part of others.
• I will commit to working with all teachers, tech embracing and hesitant, focusing on the benefits and enhancements that technology brings to education.
• I will not force tech upon anyone who isn’t ready, but I will always be ready and willing to help any who ask.

Having never really committed to doing this before, or really thinking about it for that matter, I found this exercise enlightening and guiding. I have since printed them out and placed them on my desk so that I can be reminded of it frequently. When I train, podcast, teach, learn or work, I ask myself am I being true to my vision and mission. Will today get my closer or farther from my goals? And am I acting in accordance with my values?

If you haven’t done something like this, I highly

recommend it. If you have, take it out, look it over and see if it needs some updating. This experience has allowed me to put into words and actions something I knew was there, but had never articulated. Now with them clear and present, I can be more mindful and start truly living by them.

I had a big reality check last year, after completing my first year as a Technology Integration Specialist (ToSA in all but name). My specialist friends and I did some great things last year; got tech into classrooms, led some great PD on PBL, tech integration and literacy, supported 8 innovators each, getting them to be the best they could be, and completed untold hours of training and coaching practice to get better at our jobs. It was the biggest, fastest, most meaningful growth of my career. My tech skills soared, my coaching sills were refined and honed to a razor edge, and I had a huge growth in my PLN, thanks to twitter and voxer and other social media apps repurposed for education. And my reward for all that growth and expertise? I got a fat 17% pay cut.

It seems that the specialist had done a great job of informing almost all of our stakeholders about the great things we were doing. All of them except our fellow teachers.

In retrospect, I can see it. We were constantly barraged with questions, seemingly with some malicious intent, about “what do you do all day?” We took the defensive. We circled the wagons and instead of being open and honest and transparent, we referred all of the questions to our boss. Not the best PR move for us, and looking back, we definitely misread the intent, but it is what it is. Now, with a year under our belt and a costly lesson just within view in our rearview mirror, we must swallow our fears, hitch up our jeans and get to work spreading the good word of the things we accomplished last year, as well as the good we are continuing to do this year. So, now we must become masters of marketing, and branding to repair the inadvertent damage caused.

Marketing for teacher can be a tricky thing. We are not accustomed to getting out there and selling a product to adults, our customers (read: audience) are traditionally the students. For many of us, the prospect of marketing ourselves seem silly at best, and downright terrifying at worst. But now, as ToSAs and Specialists, we have a duty and an expectation to be as upfront and public as possible with the benefit and need for our work. If not, you could wind up in a situation where your own customer base (the teachers we are here to help) could end up being our biggest critics.

We need to look at this in a structured way or we may get confused. It is pretty easy to do, and because we live in a world of Simon Sinek, we need to start with the Why?

Why Marketing?

The easy and quick answer to this is we need to tell our story, because if we do not, others will. And they won’t do it justice. Mostly, if we are not our telling our story, someone with an incomplete picture of the story will start telling it and filling in the missing spots with spurious information. You know your story, and you need to tell it, details and nitty gritty and hardships and challenges and successes. Put it all in there. We have a journey we are taking, which means we have a story to tell. Tell it with pizzazz and panache, and tell it true. People will get the whole picture and not fill in the missing spots with their own version of the tale.

What do we tell?

Well, everyone has a story to tell, but I would limit yours to the pertinent and job related details that make up your day to day. I know it seems tedious, and part of your reaction will be “who wants to know that?” But seriously, tell it. It makes you relatable and more human, and gives the tale an element of truth that you cannot get from the sports-highlight reel kind of storytelling. Talk about frustrations and successes, about the struggles of putting together a good PD, and that PD that fell on its face. Tell about your attempt to recover and make it better for next time. It is not all sunshine and lollypops, and if you tell the story that way, people will see it for what it is. Tell it true, and it will ring so.

But don’t make it one failure after another, something like that would make us look inept. Sprinkle them into the narrative, just enough to show how you overcame. Just a dab’ll do ya. Make sure you hit all the highlights of your particular position/situation. Tell about the successful implementation of one of your trainings in a classroom, talk up the new and wondrous things our teachers are doing, things that you showed them, about how they took what you presented and ran with it, made an awesome project or product and got students motivated and engaged in learning. The focus is on the teaching and learning, and while you are a part of that, the spotlight needs to be on the teacher using your training, and the students who benefit from that. That is, after all, why we are all here.

Where do we tell it?

There are several avenues for this, depending on your comfort level. In BUSD, we have a podcast that we run. We share a lot there, about the trainings and new things we are learning, and about the classrooms we go into and the strategies we love. It is a great outlet for us. We are not in it for the podcast fame (ha ha ha), but beyond getting our story out, it is a place we can reflect on practice and share that reflection with others, to help guide the way. The podcasts are as much for us as our audience, and that seems to work well.

Another avenue is what you are reading right now, a blog. There are a ton of edu-blogs out there, and I can see why. Blogging is a great way to share, sure, but like podcasting, it forces reflection and introspection. Why did that strategy work while this one failed? How did that class demo go so well this week and flop last week? How can I best bring info to my teachers and dose it out in manageable enough chunks to be useful and not overwhelming (something I need to work on, as you can see!).

Yet another avenue is a newsletter. There are some great newsletters out there, and some innovative ways of producing and distributing one. Google slides is a good tool, as well as the templates on Microsoft Word. My advice on this one is K.I.S.S., keep it super simple. Provide lots of links and summaries, and let your audience choose what interests them and what they want to follow up on. Give some info, but not too much as to be overwhelming. Get feedback and see what they like best and give them more. Feedback and interactivity are the keys to newsletter success.

When do I tell the story?

This can be a tricky one. Our answer for the first year was along the lines of “we are not ready to tell our story yet” and that did a whole lot more hurting than helping. Learn from us, tell your story often, and start telling it soon. It will all depend on your environment and your ability to read your customers/target audience, but even some of the foundational work we needed to do to get our feet under us would have made our teachers a little more understanding of our new positions and job duties. Be open about your learning and your path. We were reeling for our first few months, and it wasn’t surprising. All six of us were coming out of the classroom for the first time, and that first month or two is awash with emotions and fears, excitement and second guessing. Many of us missed the classroom, and we were thrown off our game, not having a classroom to set up, not making first day folders or worksheets, not having to learn new names. That itself is a story, and a compelling one at that. Teachers understand and would relate. It is a world upon its head, and important to share. Just make sure you limit it to one, maybe two stories and move on.

After that, the frequency of your updates to the story will be dictated by your customers/teachers/audience. Bimonthly would be a good starting place, and then you can adjust for your audience. There is a fine line between updating teachers and overwhelming them with too much info. Get that feedback and make sure your work is riding that line.

Who Do I tell?

This one is easy, tell EVERYONE. Your story and job reaches a quite a few people. It is not like your classroom, where you were reaching those in your classes and their parents. Now your reach has grown exponentially, and you reach many more teachers, and that means your impact reaches their students as well. You need to make sure you are reaching all the stakeholders, and you tailor that message to each of them. It doesn’t take much to tailor a message, a change in presentation sometimes is all that is needed. In our situation, it took a change of focus. When we presented to the Board of education, we had a slightly different focus than then presenting to our boss or to the teachers. The Board wanted to hear about student impact, and the Superintendent wanted to hear about how we are impacting teachers. Our teachers wanted to know how we were helping them help students, and parents needed to know what we were doing to make their students education better than it was before we were out of the classroom. It can seem daunting when all spelled out like that, but knowing that updates are all that is needed to make each of these happy and keep them informed helps.

What I would do different this year is really focus on the teachers, making sure they were kept abreast of what we are doing and making sure their questions were answered. They are our focus this year, they are our most valuable customer, mostly because we did such a poor job with this last year.  Be aware of your most valuable asset and make sure you keep them in the loop.

How do we make it memorable?

There is a slew of ways to address this question, and your customers/teachers will dictate your best avenue of approach. For us, it was SWAG! People love getting things. We did a good job branding ourselves. No one could say they weren’t aware of us, but just because they were aware didn’t mean they understood what we did. A distinction we are working to remedy this year.

First of all, we had a great boss and Superintendent who helped us with a nice budget for swag. I have worked with district budgets, and that helped a lot with our branding crusade. In our small district, we have a budget in excess of $35 million dollars. In the big picture, we asked for $2000 for our SWAG. That was bout $10 a teacher. We would have been happy with $5/teachers, but we got what we asked for. We spent judiciously and were able to assemble a variety of tech and teacher-friendly give-a-ways. Some small beach balls, some notepads, some pens, some lanyards with flash drives on them, and headphones. All branded and all free for teachers coming to our PD sessions. It was a great icing on the PD cake, and teachers loved it. Do what you can, in your means, to get things into the hands of your audience.

Lastly, make your info easy to access. Some of the more memorable things we did cost us zero. We put together a menu of training options and passed it out to each site. It was arranged into three categories of trainings available: Teacher Trainings, Class Demos, and Admin PLC/PLN enhancements. By categorizing our trainings, a teacher could find the training they wanted easier, and it was a big hit. We also curated content on our website/LMS (learning management system) to make all of the best content readily available with a few clicks of the mouse. We had about 20,000 hits on our LMS last year, and 18,000 were on the Educational Services Resources page. That is a 90% hit rate, which is damn good. People appreciated and used the site as a resource for their classroom and to springboard to information they needed, that they knew we had available for them.

Trainings offered 2016 Menu of Options (feel free to steal, but if you do, can I get a copy?)

Educational Services Resources for BUSD

I have some resources below about marketing and some psychology of marketing and branding. They helped us tailor our message and get people to our PD. You might find them helpful in your situation like we did. I have also curated some resources on the Marketing tab on this site. Make sure you stop by and check them out.

Link to Marketing resources

We know what it is, but do we know the most effective ways to get it? Want to solicit feedback from students and don’t know where to start?  Here are a few quick tech-enhanced tools that can get you started. Want some help implementing one, I can help with that.

Plickers                       www.plickers.com 

What is it?  Plickers is a powerfully simple tool that lets teachers collect real-time formative assessment data without the need for student devices. Teachers can use Plickers for quick checks for understanding to know whether your students are understanding big concepts and mastering key skills. Plickers gives all students the chance to participate and engage in learning without feeling self-conscious. No waiting for students to log-in on a computer or even open the right app. Plickers integrates seamlessly into the way you already teach. In terms of tech, it is an image recognition and reader tool that helps you get live feedback from students.

What do you need?

Plickers cards (printable or you can buy them here)

projected device showing website

scanner/reader for cards (iPad, wireless phone works well)

Set Up Time: Takes some time to place items in the bank, but it is well worth it. Questions are kept in the library for reuse later. You can also add images to questions (or images as questions themselves)

Limits:  Only 4 answer choices, and they all have to be multiple choice or true/false.

Probably the premier real-time feedback tool that I have ever used. Students can see the answers, where they fall on the list and even a running tally. This can be used in multiple environments and for multiple classes/subjects. As long as you have time to plan, you have time to Plicker. Easy download of results for addition to your gradebook. It is a very awesome tool that has really set the standard for me as to what a tech-enhanced feedback tool should be.

Kahoot!                       www.getkahoot.com 

What is it? Online quiz game for students. It can be used at any subject/grade, and it’s main goal is to make learning fun. One of the things that makes Kahoot! So unique is that it’s a platform where you decide on the content, the imagery and how the game is played. You can either choose one of the 8.5+ million free public games and adapt it for your own learners, or create something of your very own from scratch.

What do you need?

A device per student or student group

Projected Questions

Device to control (iPad or phone works well)

Set Up Time: If you find a quiz you like among the 8.5 million available, you are good to go. There are a lot of tools to help you find a quiz that might fit. If not, you can quickly create one. It is like making a multiple choice test.

Limits: Only lists top 5 on screen, this can lead to disengagement of the other students in class. As with Plickers, the multiple choice/survey limit. You can have a discussion, but it is limited by platform.

I have used Kahoot for a few quizzes and some random fill the gap time. It has worked well whenever I have used it, and my only regret is not having more time to explore. I feel that if I really explored the app and had the time to put into it, it could be used much more. Their website is full of resources, templates to have the students and you make their own quizzes, and a robust help section.

Quizizz                        www.quizizz.com 

What is it? An online quiz much like kahoot that allows for quiz searching, creating and assigning. They do have some unique features like homework mode, where kids can take quizzes at home, and some cool functionality like avatars and analysis that isn’t available on kahoot.

What do you need?

A device per student or student group

Projected Questions

Set Up Time: If you find a quiz you like with the robust search features, you are good to go. There are a lot of tools to help you find a quiz that might fit. If not, you can quickly create one. It is like making a multiple choice test. You can also combine and edit current quizizz to tailor them to your needs.

Limits: Same as Plickers, the multiple choice/survey limit. You can have a discussion, but it is limited by platform.

So I was exposed to this tool recently and it has become a favorite in spaces where all kids have a device. They have fun avatars, kids get to pick their names, and the ability, like plickers, to have all students appear on the screen is key to keeping everyone engaged. Also, you have none minutes for grading. It is easy and simple to check for understanding, and with the ease at which you can review answers and re-quiz, you can CFU multiple times and ensure that engagement and retention. Best demo I saw looked like this: Give quizizz, show live results on screen. Go over results (green and red bars on screen). Reteach the material, and then immediately retake quizizz. See the green bars ill the screen. Retake quizizz at the start of the next day to ensure retention and recall. All grading done for you.

 
I’m sure there are many more out there, and if you have any suggestions for me to check out or feedback on the list here, please leave it in the comments. If you want an training, or a demo, let me now and I will be happy to come out and bang one out for you in class.

Remember, it is only through some quality feedback that we can customize our instruction to best meet the needs of our students. These tools make it easy to get the feedback you need.  From the dogpound at the BIC, see y’all next post!

They say that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. I don’t know anything about that, but it is getting warm in here.

I intended as one of my goals this year to be more reflective in what I am doing. Part of that reflection would be the upkeep of my blog. Well as I look back on the year so far, it seems that this was one of the places I have been neglecting. It is not because I think it a chore, or because I don’t like writing (because if you have seen some of my posts, I can go for miles), but because it has been at the bottom of the list. A long list of new job duties and projects and exciting happenings in the classroom and trainings have made it hard to get some time to sit and reflect, let alone write. But as I sit in a meeting, waiting for my turn to present, I can create some room in my thought and schedule to reflect.

Continue reading Reflection Inception →

It is always exciting starting a new school year. Be it as a student or as a teacher, there was always that nervous feeling before school starts, the little bit of restlessness the night before, the fluttering stomach the morning of. I think that it comes from the felling of opportunity and potential that the new year brings. Will this be the year I get straight A’s? Will this be the year my grading keeps up with lesson planning? Will this be the year I sort out my discipline? Will this be the year . . . it is the mantra of every student teacher and admin the week before school starts.

This year, the Specialist (TOSA) team from BUSD started the year off with a CUE Rockstar TOSA camp. As you can tell from previous posts, my CUE Rockstar teacher experience was something that I will not forget soon, and something that I still look back on and pull out gems for making my classroom and work life more streamlined and tech-integrated. I learned many skills at that first Rockstar that I am still raving to colleagues about. I couldn’t wait to go and experience a Rockstar camp especially made for TOSAs!

The one thing I can say about the CUE Rockstar experience is that it does not disappoint. The topics were designed with the teachers on special assignment and instructional coaches in mind, and therefore right up our alley. I was glad I was able to share the experience with more of my colleagues, and we could supersize the learning and get busy turning PD on it’s head in our district. There were seven of us that were able to go, a good sized team targeted on making our district PD soar to the next level.

I went to two sessions by Ben Cogswell (@cogswell_ben), the first on feedback. Ben stretched my views on feedback, and challenged my views on public vs. private feedback. He has caused me and my colleagues to come up with a better feedback form for our PDs, and to make that feedback both public and frequent.

The other session from Ben was on creating a coaching Omnipresence. This is really something that we needed to work on. Even though last year was a big success for the BIC, both in PD trainings given and professional growth for individual members, we struggled to reach out to our teachers effectively and consistently. We have made that one of our goals this year, to be more of a presence to our teachers and to make a point to get out and be seen and heard. Many of the things Ben suggested can be placed into our practice quickly and help us be more visible to those we are serving the most, our teachers. Thanks Coach Ben for the insight and help planning some great “get out there” activities.

I had my eyes opened again in my session form David Theriualt (@davidtedu) entitled Learning as a Happening. It got me to think about the building blocks of a PD, and how small projects and skill can lead to bigger projects incorporating those skills taught in the smaller lessons and projects. It is about building a foundation of skills, deep and wide, and then setting the student up for success when they are able to use those foundational skills on some bigger culminating project. I liked the student friendly approach and how successes built on one another to really have the student able to let their skill show and shine. I also like how we can incorporate that model into our own PD as well, teaching them small and easy foundational skills that will lead to a much bigger and complex project where those taught skills can shine.

Lastly, I went to a great session by Jody green (@peerlessgreen) on becoming a producer instead of a roadie in our TOSA shoes. Jody set us up with a great goals planning worksheet, where we had to really thing about our Vision and Mission as a TOSA, and how we are going to go about making that Vision a reality. Her ability to break things down and make the chunks manageable for us is what really helped us in our planning. As with all Rockstar sessions, there was a lot of hands on a group work so we could help each other and share and refine our plans with other teachers familiar with the life and struggle of the TOSA. I came out with a great plan for the learning and PD arc I would like to implement over the next few years, as well as some SMART goals and benchmarks along the way. Thanks Jody for helping us focus on our vision and plan steps to make that vision a reality.

As with all CUE events, there was a great deal of networking and time to connect with teachers. Being a TOSA can be a tough job, compounded by the fact that sometime you have to do that job with no one in your district understanding the role, making it a lonely job too. Events like this help us to bolster our PLC, and connect us with teachers hoeing the same row as us, making us feel a little less lonely, and giving us a friendly face to bounce ideas off with when no one in your district understands our crazy ideas and plans. It is definitely an experience I recommend, whether it is a Rockstar TOSA edition, Teacher edition, or even Admin, the networking and fellowship is worth the price of admission. I can honestly say, this is best start to a school year I can remember in a long time.

It is hard in this era of high-stakes testing and the move to common core to really pinpoint what is working in schools. I have been fortunate enough to go and see several school sites this year in my role as a Technology Integration Specialist. The schools spanned from dirt poor with low SES students to very posh and high parental education rates. All of these schools are transforming learning and all of them were what we would consider “on the right track” to enhance student achievement.

But when asked how this was accomplished, all of these well-performing districts have a few things in common. It didn’t matter about home environment or computer and internet access at home, it wasn’t the most state of the art classrooms and newest teaching styles that dominated, even though all of this was evident in one form or another at the great schools I visited. What made the most difference in these places of great learning was the teacher. Hands down and far and above anything that could be done at home or at school, the biggest impact on kids caring about school and doing well were the teachers that were leading the charge. Every district has these teachers in isolated pockets in different schools. I’m sure if I asked you, you could name at least one or two teachers really rockin’ it, making a difference not by the subjects they teach, but by the attitude and care and deliberation they bring their profession.

What the great districts do is capitalize on these sparks in the system. I have seen handpicked schools formed from these forward thinking and caring teachers, and the scores at that school jump to heights never dreamed of. I have seen these teachers placed in mentoring roles and where they are accepted and successful, these islands of greatness grow. It is the deliberation and care that these teachers bring with them, along with a solid foundation of teaching skills, of course, that have really made the leap from good to great.

Taking the model of these islands of greatness, my district has implemented Teacher Specialist positions. They took 8 teachers, whose specialties ranged from technology integration, content area specialists, PBL and early literacy, and placed them on special assignment to help spread their love of teaching and learning to others. During this past year, these teachers have put on professional development trainings, coordinated district contests, worked closely with volunteer teachers to turn up their classroom experiences, and planned out the goals, standard schedules, and targeted interventions for our district. In our inaugural year, our students have made strides on the SBAC testing and improved attendance. More importantly however, the district’s declining enrollment has started reversing itself, and this was the lowest year for district transfer requests in 5 years.

I cannot place all of that on these new specialist positions, although I would like to. It has been a district wide effort to stem the flow. But the great thing that was happening in 8 of the classed in the district is now starting to filter out to more and more classrooms. The Specialists, through PD and class visits, lesson demos and coaching sessions, lessons studies and tech Tuesdays, have started to grow the islands of excellence into a larger and more noticeable land mass.

I am grateful to be a part of that change. I am one of the 8 specialists, and we take pride in the things we have done this year. We were recently asked to put together an executive summary of this year, so it can be delivered to the board of Education. They knew there were taking a risk in hiring these 8 Specialists away from the classroom, and it is through that summary that they will see that their faith was well placed. Try as we might, we could not cut that summary down to less than 9 pages. We are proud of your work, proud of each other, and proud of the district that took a chance on us and let us prove our worth in this exciting new capacity.

Next year is coming fast. We are all anxious to continue our work helping our teachers and students reach that maximum potential. We will be bringing forth new programs, new learning opportunities, and expanding some of the current programs that have done so well.

But through all the work and improvement, through all of the sweat and long hours, I think we still feel like we are proving ourselves. You hear the occasional comment from teachers about our longer hours and higher pay, you see the looks from the teachers who resent our new positions and gripe about the work we are doing (even though they didn’t apply for it). I think we will be proving our worth for as long as our district has the specialist positions. For us, it is not about the pay or the long hours, and it certainly isn’t about the teachers in the corner whispering and mocking. It is about the 20,000 lines of code our 3^rd graders wrote in a week. It is about the higher ELA scores our target intervention group keeps posting. It is about the 72 hours of green screen videos shot by district students and staff. It is about the 1000+ downloads of our podcast and screencasts. It is the renewed sense of pride and belonging that is spreading amongst the staff and students. For most of us, it is about coming to work every day, and the sacrifice that we made to give up the comfort of our classrooms and step into an uncertain and thankless job. And really, the only person I am there to prove anything to is my fellow specialists.

Marketing and branding are an important part of my world now that I have become a Technology Integration Specialist. Teachers in my district seem to have this perception that as soon as teachers leave the classroom, our days are filled with lazing about, sitting at our computers, shopping on Amazon and cruising Instagram and Pinterest to fill out our time. Because we are not front and center teaching students, we must have nothing to do.

I know that my district isn’t the only place that this prejudiced view of teachers out of the classroom or on special assignment persist. It is so prevalent, in fact, that there is a nice acronym for TOSA highlighting this glut of time available to us, Teachers Ordering Starbucks Again.

I would like to think that these stereotypes are from misinformed teachers who can’t imagine what life outside of a classroom must be like. Before I got this position, I couldn’t fathom what “those” teachers would do to fill the time, either. Now that I am inside the fishbowl instead of on the outside looking in, I wrote a blog post about my numbers for the year and how much more work this job is that I ever thought. More trainings and meetings and coordinating and scheduling trainings and learning about training teachers and practicing tech stuff and recording podcasts and blogging and reading and populating resources pages for teachers and curating the district LMS. . . it is a lot. But how can I spread the word about that work? How do I get that info out to break that stereotype? Well, I tell you what I have tried this year so far.

I have been out and about into classrooms this year, teaching lessons, troubleshooting problems, helping with PBL projects, and trying to get as many people as possible to see me doing my new TOSA thing. Our Educational Services Department has gone to great lengths to build a brand, to advertise our space the BIC (Bassett Innovation Center), to spread the word. We have SWAG to give away, workshops we put on for teachers in or new learning space, a ticketing system that allows teachers to request our help planning lessons, integrating technology, or lesson studies, to name a few. We have created a whole website based on the resources available to our teachers, with hundreds of pages with literally thousands of resources. Our office, with its dog-bone shaped desk is affectionately called “The Dogpound” by all who come to train and learn here. We had an open house for the BIC, with local Assembly members, Mayors from two cities, a Congresswoman, and other dignitaries present.  It was a great event, and we were able to showcase the innovation and forward thinking that is driving instruction in our district. But still, we hear the constant questions “what exactly do you do,” and “you must have a lot of free time on your hands,” and my favorite “let me take a look at your calendar.” We smile and move on, and try to be as helpful as possible. But that doesn’t seem to be enough.

We have various public outreach avenues as well, the most popular being the TOSAs Talking Tech podcast. The open questioning of “what exactly do you do over there?” and “what are your hours again?” are constant reminders that we still need to be actively promoting and marketing ourselves to the teachers we are intended to serve. I think it is the familiarity that breeds the contempt that we see.  We were colleagues in the classroom, and it is hard to see us in a new light or in a different role. Where teachers from other districts are readily open to our expertise, complimentary even of the work we are doing and the strides we have taken in such a short year’s work, at home we are questioned and looked at askance. Our own teachers, the teachers who we visit and help in their classrooms, the teachers who call us for help, place tech tickets in the system, and directly benefit from our help and contributions, these can at times be our biggest and loudest critics.

It must be the lot of the specialist to be unrecognized, scorned even, by those too close to see the greater good being accomplished. I’m not here to bemoan our place, just to show that despite the marketing and branding, the work and effort we put into this new position, sometimes a stone is just a stone, and a teacher without a classroom will always draw ire form those in the trenches.

So I was inspired by a recent blog post from Ryan O’Donnell about his year in numbers (click here for that post) and off course that got me to thinking about my year by the numbers.

Being a first year Technology Integration Specialist, I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. Sure, I saw the job description, but the lofty and dreamy ideas I had while imagining what my year would be like were far from the reality of the job. Was that just a misunderstanding on my part, or did the job morph into something that was unexpected by both me and my boss? Let’s take this opportunity to reflect on it, by the numbers.

First off, I can see that my numbers indicate there was a lot of communication going on. At one point I had over 6000 emails in my inbox before I started purging. We get some spam in our district (but those get deleted right away). Still, 6K emails seemed ridiculous, so I went with sent emails instead. Communication this year has been great within my department and between my innovators. It is the one thing that I focused on, keeping people inside the loop, making sure I was sharing as much as possible, getting back to people quickly. I hope to keep that up for next year as well.

The next thing that pops out at me is the amount of learning I did this year. That was one aspect of this position that surprised me the most, the amount of trainings and conferences, in-services and edcamps, PLCs and PLNs. I read a lot as well, inspired by reading lists of my twitter peeps and voxer groups (#ConnectedTL tribe Represent!). I had more on-point pedagogy and metacognition discussions in one month on twitter and voxer than in my previous five years of site meetings. The opportunities for growth through social media are real, and all it takes is a willingness to go out and find your tribe!

I did crazy amounts of professional reading and learning this year, even for an English major, but it was highly engaging and most of it was applicable almost immediately. I love to learn, as most teachers do, and this year has really sparked that love of learning in me again, and I find myself sneaking in a chapter or two of reading at night instead of my Sons of Anarchy or Breaking Bad binges (although I still leave some room for those too!)

There was a lot of content creation for me this year as well, designing lessons and PDs that I would present to teachers or small groups. I figured that would be a part of this job, but looking back, I thought more of my day would be spent in classrooms, sleeves rolled up and getting my hands dirty with some good lessons. I hear some of my colleagues and tribe members talking about missing the kids and the classroom, but I got my fixes during the year, and I really enjoy teaching teachers as well. We have an image up in our office about our impact as an educator, and how teachers reach fewer students at a deeper influence, but as TOSAs and Admin, we are able to increase our sphere of influence and impact potentially more students by improving teaching and learning. I think that is reflected in the increase in calendar appts with teachers, in the PDs led and in the QRs generated for digital portfolios for my innovators. Also our podcasts and screencasts increase our reach and influence in ways we are still coming to grips with. We started the podcast as a fun outlet and easy way to spread PD and the word about our work, but it has morphed into something that we love doing, and that shows in the improvement of quality in the shows, and in the increased subscriptions as the show has gone on.

So by the numbers, it was a very busy year, one full of communication, collaboration and some interesting obstacles and speed bumps we never saw coming. My hope for next year is to continue the communication pieces I have started this year, to get into the classroom with the tools and skills I learned this year, and to get the word out about the great things happening in the Bassett Unified School District. As our superintendent says, we are on the Move!

Thanks Ryan for inspiring some reflection based on hard numbers. If you are looking to make a sheet of your own, Ryan has made his google drawings template available on his site. Head on over and see how your year stacked up by the numbers . . .