Keep Learning

"There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning."

Jiddu Krishnamurti

I think the most important thing a teacher can do when the final bell rings, when the students leave the room, when the silence of a busy day falls, is to keep on learning. We need to learn about our students' interests: their music, their use of technology, their fashion trends, their tv shows. We need to learn about ourselves, our colleagues, our society, our world. The more we feed our curiosity for what's out there or in here, the more it shows when we share learning with others.

Teachers, of all people, know that learning doesn't stop when you receive your diploma. I know that I have yet to perfect teaching, and so it's really important to me to keep learning how to do it better. So it's not just reflecting on what I've done and receiving student feedback, but it's also keeping up with pedagogy, reading about new brain research, learning what others are doing in their classrooms, researching educational trends.

I love learning. It's why I went into education in the first place, and it's what I love most about my new role as an ITF because I get to keep on learning and it's an inherit part of my job. I'm learning in my grad school classes, I'm learning from my peers, I'm learning at workshops, and I'm learning through podcasts. I'm also learning through my personalized learning network (PLN)

If you haven't started a PLN for yourself yet using social media, I highly recommend you give it a try. For me, the best and easiest way to get started is through using Twitter. There's a lot to consider when creating a professional social media account that's public to the world, so after those considerations, go do it! Twitter is a great place to connect with educators from all over, and to do the exact kind of research all in one place that I mentioned a couple of paragraphs earlier. It's like going to a round table session of a workshop every time you log on. This week and next week I'm sharing about this with the teachers I work with, so feel free to check out my presentation here: The Power of PLNs