Coming quickly to a close...

Today in class we had a guest speaker who brought up a variety of points for us.

• You should be easy to find on Google, but what can be found should be all appropriate. You don't want the principal to think you will a headache. "Whatever you have online you should be able to say in front of a classroom."
• Include your digital portfolio URL on your resume.
• We live in a world, where if you don't exist online, you might not be considered for jobs, further education or many opportunities. You just should not be posting everything online.
• Anything online should be considered public, so make sure it is appropriate.
• Classroom teacher vs. school teacher, do you see a difference?
• As teachers we need to share things, so that we can better our school, our division, our province, our country, our world and our presentation. Don't be an isolated educator.
• PLN's are really looked at, who knew, at least prior to this class.
• As educator's we have to be able to show growth and willingness to learn.
• Relationships are crucial both with students and with staff. You cannot expect students to adapt to you, you must adapt to them.
• You have to look beyond just teaching the curriculum, all of the other stuff is in many cases even more important.
• Look at learner profiles, to match the curriculum to your students, not trying to stuff your students into the curriculum. That is as effective as a round peg in a square whole.
• Rubrics are just telling students the minimum they need to do to get the mark that they want. This is not actually encouraging learning, it is really limiting our students. They will not become passionate learners, which should be our goal.
• Planning should be flexible, since you need to be responsive to the needs of the students.
• Embody life long learning...as teachers we should be constantly learning and expanding our skills. We need to be reflective of our own teaching, looking into our own teaching growth.
• Learning goals vs. performance goals. We need to move away from rewards/awards, instead we should see what students are actually learning.
• We should get our students looking beyond the classroom, looking at how they can benefit and change the world.
• As teachers, we should enjoy our subjects that we are teaching, since students will know if we hate the subject we are teaching.
• Supervision is an opportunity to get to know students, so that you can build a better connection with all students.
• You need to have good communication skills to be a teacher. And never deliver bad news in a written format, it should be a phone call or face to face.
• More communication is better than less, so that there are no bombshells for parents.