Introduction
Making Classroom Walls Disappear:
Twitter as a low-risk, high-support method of sharing student work and teacher practices
Wendy Fairon and Amanda Massey
May 23, 2016
“A great gardener, a great farmer, depends upon on plants growing under their care. Otherwise they’re out of business. The irony is that every farmer and gardener knows that you can’t make a plant grow. You don’t stick the roots on and paint the petals and attach the leaves. The plant grows itself. What you do is provide the conditions for growth.” –Sir Ken Robinson
Introduction
When Wendy made the move from a large district school to a small, local charter in 2009, she immediately missed the daily opportunities to share the work of her classroom and receive feedback from her grade-level partners. In Wendy’s new role, she was the only English teacher for grades seven and eight; she knew that she would need to find ways to connect with other educators to inform and push her practice. Wendy had a deep desire to celebrate the work in her room as well as connect for feedback and seek out additional methods for impacting student learning. In many ways, she desired connections to her classroom and the learning taking place within it- her students and her own. Wendy had to actively seek out opportunities to connect with others, share the work of her classroom, and move her learning beyond the walls of her school. Wendy met with teachers outside her school, joined the National Writing Project, and created a Twitter account.
In 2004, Amanda was a first-year teacher in a school with only one Kindergarten class. She spent part of her time immersed in the thrill of autonomy and innovation but longed to share what she was doing with others. She felt the most connected to her colleagues when sharing student work or looking at work done by their students. Her first-year teaching colleagues were all working in different elementary grades across the school. They celebrated one another’s work often, connecting mostly around writing. Occasionally, Amanda would Xerox a particularly humorous or striking piece of work and distribute it in her colleagues’ “mailboxes” in the staff workroom. What a pleasure it was to be able to surprise her colleagues with these unexpected “gifts,” and to share the joy she experienced from striking student work. Amanda remembers the act of looking at teacher and student work from another classroom made her feel energized and inspired, especially when thinking about how to apply or incorporate the parts she found engaging into the work she was doing with her Kindergarteners.
We embarked on a 10-month long Improvement Research project with the goal of connecting High Tech Elementary North County teachers with a wider audience for the work they were facilitating in their classrooms. Our original question was, “How is teacher practice impacted by curation of work and active participation on Twitter?”
In the scope of being a connected educators, we (Wendy and Amanda) were particularly drawn to the idea of teachers sharing student work and making their practice public. We were also interested in leveraging social media to make it possible for anyone to see highlights of a classroom and their work, as well as teacher practices throughout the day. Our hope was for the educators we work with to feel as if they were a, “fly on the wall,” in others’ classrooms, making classroom and school walls disappear for students and teachers alike. We also wanted this work to have longevity and be sustainable. Our hunch was that in order to make this successful, our teachers would need a low-risk method combined with thoughtfully crafted, high degree of support from us.
Teachers at High Tech Elementary North County were given a survey about needs/wants/dreams for the school at the beginning of the year. One trend that struck us was teachers’ desire to create a “buzz” for the organization. As we dove deeper into what this meant with various teachers, they expressed an interest in making the work of their classrooms available and public for others to see. They wanted people to be talking about the projects in North County and they wanted visitors to seek this campus out as a place to view beautiful and purposeful work.
Many adults use various forms of social media (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) in their personal lives. Instead of attending a three hour professional development with twenty minutes of purposeful content, perhaps that teacher can spend five minutes sharing two examples of student work for the day and fifteen minutes looking at what others are doing. Would that work benefit the culture and community of our school in a deeper way than structures that are currently in place?
We live in a time where there is no need for teachers to work in isolation. Even teachers in the most remote locations can connect with others via social media venues such as Twitter to share and inform each other’s practices. As school leaders, we both curate our own Twitter accounts, a common school account, and a Facebook account. We have seen how these tools allow us a chance to showcase the work of our school as well as help us build our knowledge base of effective education practices.
By using social media tools to make work public, educators are able to connect with others in a way that is personalized, timely, and curated toward their needs and interests. These tools allow educators to feel connected to others, not just at their own school, but across the world. In addition, these tools also allow for the opportunity to rethink more traditional structures for peer feedback and professional development. When presenting their work in a public way, teachers also have an opportunity to reflect upon work to assess its “publicworthiness.”
In our organization, students are expected to share, talk about, and reflect upon their work on a consistent basis. Projects end with a culminating exhibition, where students make their work public and their thinking visible. Educators sharing the work of their classrooms and schools might take a parallel course to what we are asking of our students.
When teachers actively post the work from their class in a visible way, members of the school community can start meaningful conversations in a much more informed place. How might that impact conversations at the school around deep and meaningful student work? In supporting teachers in making the work of their classrooms available and public for others to see, how might this work contribute to a feeling of “buzz” amongst our staff?
Our project aimed to connect High Tech Elementary North County teachers with a wider audience for the work they were facilitating in their classrooms. Our goal was to have all teachers on Twitter- participating, curating, and sharing. Over the last seven months we used various methods, structures and leadership moves to facilitate and promote teachers sharing student work and their own practices via Twitter.