What if.....

I came across this picture on Instagram the other day and it really inspired me. I have followed George Couros on Twitter for a while. I think he is a visionary and he really has some great ideas.... This is from a session he did at ISTE2015 this week. He said some amazing things about thinking locally (rather than globally like we have been told for so long!) He also said this...."Sometimes by focusing solely on the greatness outside of your school, we can sometimes belittle the efforts of those that we work with everyday." Powerful stuff!!!

I have always been one to share the good, bad and ugly of what goes on in my classroom. I think we need to share with each other if we want to learn form each other. It is so easy to go into your classroom, close the door and never let anyone know what it is that you are doing in there. I try and learn from others and if there is something I am doing that is working, I have a tendency to share it with my PLN first (on Facebook, by email, on Twitter)...and I need to do more sharing within my building.  

Sometimes we get so busy, we don't seem to have time to stop in the hallway and share with each other what went well today. We are more inclined to vent about what went wrong, or complain about all the work we have to get done.  But what if we took a minute or two before we went home for the day (or even once we got home) and shared something great that happened in our classroom that day?  And what if we took another few minutes to read all the tweets form our colleagues each evening? I would love to have the teachers in my building all tweeting with one another about what is going on in their classrooms. I think it would not only help us learn form one another, I think it would do wonders for community building in our school. We could look for ways to collaborate, share ideas, share successes and failures and encourage each other. 

I shared this with my principal this afternoon and I plan on having a conversation with her to see how we can make this happen. And here is the BIG takeaway...what if the parents of our students started following that hashtag on Twitter...imagine what they could discover about what their students are learning everyday, and what amazing educators are teaching their children!

What do you all think????