The SHIFT Blog

  Do you have a Professional Learning Network?  Is there a group of educators with whom you enjoy connecting with, who push your own thinking and expose you to new ideas?  We like to connect with as many people as we can online. One of those people is Matthew Oldridge , an educator who is currently on secondment to the Ministry of Education.  He tweets about mathematics, or education, or pop-culture, or his family. We enjoy his online presence because it isn’t one dimensional, he is great at letting people in and showcasing the fact that yes, he is a human when he isn’t teaching. Matthew recently posed a series of questions on his blog which he challenged his own PLN to think about and respond to.  These are the types of questions that The Shift likes to think about and, by speaking about them, coach others into thinking about them too. The Shift sat down and talked through each question and have responded to the ones that we felt we had the most to contribut...

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 the...

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...

“Why the heck did I DO that?”   Have you ever found yourself asking that question after teaching a lesson?  I did, a week or so ago.  I delivered a classic “powerpoint”, with teenager eyes glazing over but I’m powering forward and getting through my slides because “that is the lesson”.  Immediately after finishing the period, I realized I messed up. Students had probably retained 5% of the information that I just talked at them about.  This stung a little, especially since what I just did flew in the face of my current “WHY” as a teacher. One iteration of the creative process we are playing with. Let me back up and give you a bit of context.  I’m an art and photography teacher and my colleagues and I are really pushing hard to reimagine the creative process. WHY are we doing this?  We are finding that when students’ experiment within the creative process and are not evaluated, they engage more in the risk taking and truly embrace their...

Here we go, all set for another year playing this game called school!  Some of you undoubtedly have spent some time last week preparing for students’ arrival on Tuesday, some of you unpacking after moving schools, or perhaps arriving at your first school. Differentiated seating comes to life in this classroom just in time for a new school year #GettingReadyforSept5 #HDSBInspires pic.twitter.com/zxdz8p4e9q — ÉFT (@HDSBEFT) August 31, 2017 It is a time of transition, beginnings and reflection:  how are we going to do better this year?   Just finishing up a couple of great reads to best meet the needs of all learners. #gettingreadyforsept5 pic.twitter.com/uqzTe4eZqj — Mrs. Paci (@MPaci1) August 29, 2017 If you are like us, the inevitable nervous butterflies are settling in.  Imagine how our students must be feeling, especially if they are transition into a new school. Bateman LINK Leaders are hard at work training to support our incoming Grade...

Yesterday was a great day.  Matt and I spent much of our time simply watching the #LoveMyHaltonSchool tweets roll in.  We laughed, we liked, we retweeted, we saw things that were happening in other schools and we talked about how to bring that greatness to our building. And this is why we think sharing our best practices is so important.  We both work in a great school, with supportive colleagues and students.  But we can’t continue to improve as teachers if we only look within our building for inspiration.  We have to broaden our horizons by looking outwards.  Yesterday, everyone who participated by tweeting opened a window into their classroom or school. Watching the tweets were fun, but we couldn’t help but wonder about the reach of the hashtag.  Was a small group of teachers just tweeting at each other?  Were we making an impact online or were we all just yelling into the void? Well of course, there is an app for that.  We ...