Coronavirus is, without a doubt, one of the most intense, collective experiences through which I have lived. Together with 9-11, the Jacob Wetterling kidnapping, the Enron scandal, the 2008-2009 economic meltdown, the Minnesota spinal meningitis outbreak, the start of the Persian Gulf War, and the falling of the Berlin Wall, the coronavirus outbreak is a terrifying, unsettling, shared experience. There is quite a bit to make anxiety spike! Though a challenge, below is a list of 10 things that have been helping me to calm down during this tumultuous time.

1. Meditate using the Waking Up app from Sam Harris.
2. Read a book (Obstacle is the Way is my current favorite!)
3. Take a short, 15-minute walk.
4. Take a picture of something beautiful and ordinary (the view from my apartment, fresh vegetables, etc.).
5. Laugh with my boyfriend.
6. Pay attention to the clean water and yummy smelling soap when I wash my hands for 20 seconds.
7. Appreciate what I have by thinking of 5 things for which I am grateful.
8. Try to think about what opportunities will be coming out of this crisis.
9. FaceTime loved ones.
10. Watch Gourmet Makes and TED talks on YouTube.

What helps you calm down? Share your ideas below!

Blogs present a unique opportunity for school administrators to communicate their mission and vision, expectations, personality and creativity to their community’s stakeholders and the broader educational world. In addition, they can serve as a valuable networking tool and career portfolio. How best can administrators use a blog to communicate?

1. Be a role model for using technology. If principals expect their faculty to engage with technology, they should be willing to do the same. A blog is an excellent tool for showcasing enthusiasm and interest in technology. (Colorado State University – Global, 2019).
2. Share academic research. Teachers can be bogged down with e-mails about daily life at school. While well-intentioned, sending education research via e-mail may be ineffective. However, on a blog, a principal can share research and provide personal analysis or school context for the research’s possible use. This makes it more personal for teachers and families, and more interesting as well!
3. Provide refined accountability. Principals can share their school’s latest academic initiatives. By expanding the audience for these items beyond the school’s internal communication methods, they increase accountability for teachers because more stakeholders will be expecting to see and hear about the initiatives.
4. Showcase creativity and personality. Principals are humans! Blogs give them the chance to share who they are, including pictures of their work, books they have read and their long-form writing style. Teachers, students and families like to know who their principal is and blogs give them the opportunity to do this in a more direct way than standard school communication tools.
5. Expand best practices by learning through comments. School culture has a strong influence on what we understand to be effective. Sometimes, though, new and better ideas are found through sharing with practitioners outside your immediate environment. Ricky Gervais has shared about how he uses Twitter and his followers’ comments to refine and improve his jokes. Blog comments can provide this same external feedback.

References

Colorado State University-Global Campus. (2019).  Managerial leadership [Canvas ecourse].  EDL 550.

Do you have a blog? How would you recommend that principals use them for communication? Leave a comment below!

1. Two students who were incredibly resilient on a project. This was a labor of love for everyone involved. For me, it was rewarding and inspiring to see how they did not give up.
2. A group of seniors from my school have a viral TikTok. It has more than 10 million views and 1.2 million likes! I saw it when it appeared on my #foryou page. Talking to one of the creators at school this week was a blast.
3. Collaborating with other Brazilian IB coordinators at a job alike. I learn the most from people in my field who are rocking their jobs and innovating. The best part about this job alike was that it was free! Best PD and no cost.
4. A middle school teacher and I collaborated and solved a problem.
5. A high school teacher and I collaborated to support a student who has missing work.
6. Another high school colleague and I are working together to make sure a group of seniors stay on track with their work. We even collaborated with the assistant principal and this was great.
7. A group of students were in the hall and we just had a great time talking and laughing about my sunglasses. These interactions with students are incredibly meaningful to me.
8. Each student who had an assignment due that was part of a much larger research project turned it in this week!
9. Laughing with a friend (who is a colleague) about something really funny she experienced in a class. Laughing is THE BEST.
10. Many high school teachers worked with me this week to try to resolve a situation. I feel engaged and enthusiastic when I observe how passionate and committed my colleagues are to their craft and students.

One of the most meaningful parts of my day is collaborating and working with other teachers. Truly, they have the best ideas, are generous with sharing feedback and can point out my blind spots when I am teaching, writing lessons or creating systems for the IB Diploma Program. In schools, formal collaboration during meetings can sometimes be less rewarding than quick chats in the hall. Given that these are the same people in both scenarios, I wonder I have been fortunate to work with incredibly talented meeting facilitators and had opportunities to learn from failing at what works and does not for managing meetings with teachers. Read below for the ten best meeting facilitation techniques I have experienced!

1. Take minutes in real-time using a Google doc displayed on the board. This is such a useful technique. It keeps people focused, avoids misunderstandings and streamlines next steps and follow up.
2. Have an agenda. Agendas save time and provide meaning during meetings. Even a few key items written on a Google doc give a meeting a framework.
3. Ask meeting participants to add items to an agenda. I recommend allowing participants to add items openly until 24 hours before the meeting. Then move forward with the agenda as is. The meeting leader has the right to prioritize agenda items as well. This helps meeting participants to feel heard and to have some agency over their time.
4. Use Google calendar to schedule meetings and communicate cancelations and changes. A very smart assistant with whom I worked even wrote “TBC” To Be Confirmed in the title of the invite. The, she would remove the TBC if the meeting was confirmed.
5. End the meeting early if the agenda is finished. One thing that is really unproductive is to meet just to meet. If the agenda is finished, let people leave.
6. Start and end the meeting on time. I cannot overemphasize the importance of this rule. I know I am not the first person to say it and will not be the last. Respect people’s time.
7. Create a shared agreement for participation. Decisions are not inclusive if only a few people’s input is known. Set-up a plan for requiring that everyone participates. This could be as simple as doing a whip share or just prompting participants who are quiet to engage.
8. If you want to discuss a document at a meeting, share it in advance of the meeting and be clear about the expectation to attend the meeting having read the document. Do not waste people’s precious time reading documents and sharing ideas when this could easily be done outside the meeting. Adults do not need a meeting to read. They do need a meeting to collaborate and share ideas about what they read, though. Put the time to good use!
9. Appoint a time keeper. This engages more people in the facilitation of the meeting. It also shows that the meeting facilitator is able to be open-minded and values distributed leadership. It also keeps everyone accountable to the scheduled meeting time.
10. Follow through. I love collaborating with my colleagues, students and administrators to develop plans, projects and achieve outcomes. The only way to do that is if meeting participants do after the meeting what they say they will do during the meeting. Following through builds a culture of respect as well.

What are the best meeting facilitation techniques you have ever seen? I would love to know! Share in the comments below!

#meetingtechniques #meetingfacilitation #leadership #teacherleadership #administrators

Last year, I learned about TikTok after reading about Musical.ly in Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, “Crushing It.” I loved it right away and made some random videos with food that made me laugh. Since then, TikTok has exploded in popularity. Why is it such a fascinating social media app? Check out my thoughts below!

1. Right now, TikTok is about fun and creating. Yes there are celebrities, but the regular users in my opinion are way more interesting. It reminds me of Vine and Instagram when they first started. Just people creating and enjoying!
2. It feels more like normal life. There are bougie users that get made-up and show off their abs just like Instagram, but there seem to be so many more regular people that get into their videos and find ways to be original or show a new perspective.
3. The confines of the app’s framework promote creativity! People create videos using the music clips, dances, hand gestures, etc. in their own environments with their own friends and family. I have watched the same music clips and hand gesture videos made by different people, and it is not boring! I love to see how people are able to come up with new, interesting ways to express themselves in the short videos.
4. It is funny! There are so many hilarious creators and videos.
5. The app’s set-up catchy but not so time consuming. I like the swipe up functionality. It is not an endless stream exactly, so I tend to use TikTok for a few minutes a day rather than getting sucked into a rabbit hole of two hours like on other social media apps. Something about the movement of the images makes me realize that I am making a choice each time to watch another video so I do not stay on for too long.
6. It is diverse. TikTok’s algorithm shows me creators from all over the world and I love this.
7. It is an interesting topic to discuss with colleagues and students. Colleagues want to know more about it and students like to discuss certain trends. Such fun!
8. I have not noticed much advertising on TikTok. I know this will likely end soon or maybe I am just missing something, but it feels very grassroots…for now.
9. The comments! People leave all sorts of hilarious comments on my videos and others. However, the comment section is not very refined and curated like Instagram.
10. TikTok inspires me to do things that make me feel good. The unbridled joy you can see again and again in people’s faces when they make a video with a group of friends, or co-workers, or their parents is pure enjoyment to watch. TikTok spreads good vibes!

#tiktok #tiktokfans #socialmedia #socialmediaforteachers #topten #top10 #lunchtimeconversationfodder #goodvibes

As educators, our business is building strong relationships with our students and their families. How can this be done? Read ten ideas below!

1. Spell names correctly on e-mail and other written communication. This is extremely important.
2. Send quick e-mails to students and their families for a job well done. This is a great way to acknowledge and recognize students’ participation in the learning process.
3. Call families if there is difficult news to share rather than e-mail.
4. Invite families to observe student presentations during a regular class.
5. Share a weekly newsletter with families about class.
6. Communicate due dates well in advance for major projects.
7. Ask parents for feedback using Google forms and use it to improve policies and procedures.
8. Remember names, other children, jobs, interests, etc. about families and ask for updates when you can.
9. Offer meetings when families can visit the school. Sometimes, early or late times are the best and the only times that will work as an adult may be working during the school day. We want to set our families up for success to be able to participate in their child’s education!
10. Ask families to participate in educating future groups of parents about high school curriculum. They enjoy sharing their expertise and offer a much different perspective than teachers or administrators!

#education #edchat #familyengagement #relationships

Have you ever wanted to teach a different class but did not know what you would teach? Or, considered presenting at a conference but were not sure what subject to discuss? I just brainstormed a list of 10 classes I could teach right now to practice my idea muscle (as James Altucher calls it!). What do you think?

1. Scaling the Extended Essay – From 30 to 90 IB DP Students!
2. Creating Systems That Work – Collaborating With Small and Large Groups of Faculty to Get Sh!t Done!
3. Tricks of the Turn-In Trade – How Timing and Dates Can Encourage Behavior
4. Engaging Students in Higher Order Thinking – RTW Process
5. Dialogue Journals – Making Your Class and Relationships Relevant
6. Document Cameras – Why They Focus Student Learning
7. Google Classroom For Your Faculty’s Professional Development
8. Communicating About the IB With Diverse Stakeholders
9. Why IB Coordinators And Counseling Must Be a Team
10. How To Run a 5-Year Self-Study for IB
11. Being A Leader

What classes would you like to add? Share your comments below!

My name is Carrie, and I am writing this blog as an adventure and experiment.

I have been a teacher for 13 years both in the United States and abroad. I want to share my ideas, help other educators and meet like-minded, passionate educators!