The SHIFT Blog

Well, fellow Shifters, you are probably tidying your desks, thinking of a (HOT!) Canada Day weekend and looking forward to some much deserved rest.  Thank you for following along with and supporting the Shift this year, your energy and enthusiasm has been contagious! If you are looking for some summer learning opportunities, look no further.  There are at least two chances to Shift in the coming months! First up is Second City at the Barn .   July 12th and open to ALL staff in HDSB, this is a great opportunity to laugh and learn with the incredible Second City Improv Group. Next, in August you can participate in the second Shift Your (Blank) Summer Learning Day .  This is a great opportunity to energize yourself before the new school year begins and learn with like-minded Shifters like you. Signing off for the summer! Jamie and Matt

Do you have a professional learning network (PLN)? When you are planning a lesson, thinking about pedagogy, or learning about something new, do you have a group of people you turn to for guidance and support? It used to be the people who worked in our teaching offices or schools that we would rely on the most.  Today, access to social media gives us a much deeper pool of colleagues to draw ideas from. If you have an idea for a lesson, chances are there is someone else online who has done something similar and can help. So while The Shift has lots of people we rely on in person to bounce ideas off of, we also have a much wider PLN online that we can draw inspiration from. After June 4th and the #LoveMyHaltonSchool event, it would appear that this is true for many of us!  Just how big is the PNL of teachers in Halton? How far does it reach? Surprisingly, pretty far!  There were almost 400 different twitter accounts active on Monday tweeting about why they love working

Last year, the Halton District School Board ran an event called #LoveMyHaltonSchool where they asked students, staff and parents to share (via Twitter) reasons why they love Halton. This year, the event is back! You can participate by tweeting on June 4th, reasons why you love working and learning in Halton using the hashtag #LoveMyHaltonSchool We've been travelling around Halton over the past two weeks talking to students and teachers and already have been given a long list of great reasons to love Halton. Guess what...there are prizes too! FREQUENT TWEETER: The school who tweets the most on June 4th EARLY BIRD: The first school to tweet on June 4th SELFIE: The school to tweet the most selfies on June 4th MOST LIKES: The school with the most likes on their # LoveMyHaltonSchool tweet on June 4th NIGHT OWL: The last school to tweet on June 4th Tweets must include the # LoveMyHaltonSchool hashtag to be eligible.   We can't wait to follow along on