How Might We …

How might we educate teachers in technology based activities/tools?

When thinking about this ‘how might we’ question, the first thing that comes to mind as a potential issue is TIME. I am unable to meet with teachers before or after school, and lunch time likely won’t work either.

While I would love to tell my school leadership that teachers need more time off (like a half day in order to meet and plan), I suspect this isn’t possible.

To test out some ways I can reach out to teachers, I plan on:

(1) Sending out a link to a Google form with some questions (and while I know it would be best to ask these questions during a meeting, that’s not possible…yet). I will be curating questions to this and my goal is to send out the link on Monday, December 5 (after report cards are due!).

(2) Creating resources to be sent out to teachers (in the form of a video that I create, or a Google Slide with information). I don’t think I would have enough time, or resources, to send this out weekly, I’m thinking of doing it once or twice a month. I will be talking to my principal about this on Friday (as we are all trying to be mindful to not overwhelm teachers – so maybe rather then me sending out this separately, it could be included in her weekly blog to teachers).

Urgent vs Important – Reflections on the return to school

This year I have started in my new position as ‘Elementary Innovation, Technology and Integration Specialist’. While I’ve worked at schools that have had similar roles to this, it is the first time that TMS has created such a position. I’m extremely excited about this position and I feel like the possibilities of what my job could entail are endless.

My role this year is to help teachers integrate technology into the existing Montessori curriculum. While I’ve got a million ideas, I’m also very mindful of all of the workload that’s currently on teachers plates.  So far, I’ve tried offering optional extensions, or follow-up activity replacements, in order to not add any more work for the teachers. So far it seems to be going well!

During our reflection, one thing that has stuck with me that is both urgent and important, is how can I best support students in my new role that are unable to access the current curriculum either due to language or ability? While we do have a Learning Strategies team at our school (and they are amazing!), their plates are also very full and unfortunately they are unable to be everywhere at once.

This year I want to show teachers how technology can support and enhance their lessons, without them feeling like I’m giving them work. I also want to find tools to help students access a curriculum that they currently can’t (with the hope that soon our curriculum can adapt and meet students at their level).