New School Year Resolutions for Teachers

The first day of a new school year is almost as magical as the moment the ball drops at midnight on December 31 in that there’s so much to look forward to—new learners, a new classroom, and new Pinterest decorations covering the walls of your space. Take advantage of this time by setting a few goals or resolutions for yourself.

Write them down, tell your educator friends, whatever it takes to make sure you stick with each one. Whether you’re learning how to use a new classroom tool or giving yourself an hour of “me-time” every day, you’ll be glad you did.

Start a Teacher Blog

You can use a classroom or teacher blog to display student work, communicate with parents, or share classroom tips and stories with fellow educators. However, if creating and implementing a blog in your classroom seems daunting, focus on taking the first step: Sign up on WordPress or Edublogs and write your first post—you might get hooked!

Make Time for YOU

As an educator, it’s so hard to make time for yourself. It seems like a never-ending loop of work and more work between grading papers and prepping for lessons. Resolve to make more time for yourself this year, even if it’s just one hour after you get home to have a relaxing dinner before diving back into work.

Try a New Classroom Tool

Challenge yourself to try at least one new classroom tool this year. With so many budget-friendly options to choose from, it’s easier than ever to find one you love without breaking the bank. Try one of these new tools that will help you to engage learners better while broadening your skillset:

Try Blended Teaching

If you’re not ready to dive headfirst into technology, try a blended approach, where you combine traditional and modern techniques to engage your learners better. Start your lesson with a traditional lecture method, followed by blogging, watching a YouTube video, or something more fitting for the lesson.

For example, take learners to Ancient Rome with Google Maps after a lesson about the history of this once prosperous society—you can literally walk the cobbled streets of modern-day Rome, giving learners a cultural and geographical lesson that is exciting and engaging.

Get More Organized With Technology

Something is satisfying about writing your to-do list and crossing each item off by hand. However, this isn’t always practical, especially when you’re trying to remember what you need to do tomorrow while driving from school to the grocery store, your lone sticky note sitting on your desk at work.

Use tools like Evernote, TeuxDeux, or Vitalist to keep everything in one easy-to-access place while still having the satisfaction of crossing off or removing an item from the ever-expanding list.

The new school year is a chance to improve yourself and your teaching. Use it as an opportunity to try something new, make time to focus on yourself, try a blended learning approach, and more. You never know what you can accomplish with so much ahead of you.

Why Pop Culture has a Place in the Classroom

Comic books can bring pop culture into the classroom.

Incorporating pop culture and media into the classroom is a divisive issue amongst educators, and not without reason. While pop culture has its benefits, it could be distracting if integrated inappropriately. It can also be intimidating for an educator to relate to learners of a different generation without feeling out of touch.

However, the benefits of teaching using popular media are substantial. It helps engage learners, brings lessons off the page, and addresses controversial topics. Furthermore, it could be a fun lesson for the end of the semester or a light distraction during tense academic periods.

Why should educators include pop culture in the classroom?

“We cannot sit back and let our students passively digest the material. No, instead, teachers should actively engage students in discussions about the controversial material bombarding them,” Mark Hauser wrote in EducationWeek, rallying educators to stare down music with inappropriate themes rather than shy away from it.

Hauser notes, correctly, that “clean” versions of popular songs mask the profanity but don’t modify the inappropriate themes that come with the chosen language.

The net result is that learners believe the moral shortfall is in specific profane terms. However, the overarching theme of the content is more damaging to a student’s life view.

Pop culture provides a great jumping-off point for discussions on ethics, morals, and current world events regarding controversial themes.

Music, movies, and entertainment inspire richer discussion than news articles. Articles require a reader to see a rolling coverage to understand and engage on the topic.

The educational consultant’s other resounding point is that pop culture lessons help educators meet learners in the middle. They relate to each other in ways learners understand. Educator Clay Morgan endorses this point.

“Lucky I know about zombies,” he petitions before detailing how he used the 2009 film Zombieland to explain the Morgenthau Plan. This strategy made a bored class come alive.

The Morgenthau Plan sounds like something dry in a heavy textbook, perfect for closing and taking a nap. Introducing the topic through the Zombieland rules of zombie apocalypse survival, in this case, Rule #4, “The Double Tap,” as Morgan does, can draw more interest from the outset.

How should educators include pop culture in the classroom?

Would Benjamin Franklin be a Facebook user? How would Abraham Lincoln’s presidential campaigns look on social media? What would the Great Fire of London or the toppling of the Roman Empire look like on Twitter?

Teach learners a lesson about digital media while deeply exploring historical figures and events. Have learners create social media accounts for important figures and events.

The task calls upon digital literacy and storytelling elements that they feel comfortable with while challenging them to think critically about history and social media.

It can be daunting to incorporate music lyrics and movie references for an educator from a different generation than their learners. Educator Tim Weedon, however, provides a three-step framework for educators using pop culture in their classrooms.

Stage 1: Prep

Weedon begins by casually asking learners about their tastes in music (his pet area of interest). He then analyzes the responses from his learners for relevance to topic areas covered in the curriculum course. Weedon pays close attention to lyrical content and themes, ensuring they fit the class’s age.

Stage 2: Development

Using pop culture in group activities is a great way to break the ice in a new class. Weedon suggests assigning learners reading and developing song lyrics/poems in groups. You can read a full breakdown of his lesson plan on Development Education.

Stage 3: Practice

Primarily useful in teaching literature analysis, Weedon asks learners to analyze their favourite song lyrics and how they would be relevant to the course.

The educator subscribes to the same view as Hauser on any inappropriate subject matter. He says, “It is better to discuss the text rather than avoid the subject matter without offering any educational choices or advice.” He does, however, state that he looks closely at the chosen songs and doesn’t guarantee their use.

Once they have decided on their topics and songs, they break down the song structure through vocabulary, spelling, grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, and linguistics.

A popular and effective format for lessons is song. Educators use the melodies of well-known songs or match a popular style to teach a lesson. It takes confidence, but it is fun for educators and makes content incredibly catchy and memorable for learners when done well. I’ve been singing math lessons in my head all day on more than one occasion!

There are many resources to guide you through using pop culture in your teaching. It’s an element of pedagogy that can give an edge to your teaching and provide a deeper reference to content. Join one of the many communities online, connect with educators on social media, or dive into music, movies and tv. It isn’t as intimidating as it seems.

These are some great resources for you to explore incorporating pop culture in the classroom:

Browse Tim Weedon’s full series here: https://developmenteducation.ie/feature/exploring-popular-culture-in-education/

Visit the Popular Culture Pedagogy Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/popculturepedagaogy

Storytelling With Technology

Storytelling with technology can increase digital literacy.

Storytelling is an important skill for kids to develop while at school. It’s a soft skill that will help them think more creatively, give more compelling presentations, and develop greater confidence. There are many engaging digital platforms that you can use in the classroom to stimulate your learners’ creativity in innovative ways. We have compiled our top five tools for telling stories with technology.

iMovie

iMovie, Apple’s free editing software, takes the intimidation out of video-making and editing. Learners can import videos filmed on their phones or camera devices and begin editing straight away with the program’s simple interface.

Learners can make creative movies and presentations and turn assignments into documentaries. It is easy to edit the clips by adding titles, transitions, music, effects and performing basic colour correction and quality enhancements.

Being such a widely used product means a robust community also provides tips, tricks, and advice on making videos. Check out Apple’s manual, iOS guides, and the O’Reilly iMovie manual.

Storybird

Storybird is a web-based application that allows learners to write a story to picture books. They have subverted the storytelling process and developed a tool to get learners thinking creatively. Storybird hosts batches of images featuring characters interacting and doing various things – like making a mess when eating – for learners to put words to.

Storybird is a great way to teach writing skills to younger learners and challenge older learners’ creative and storytelling skills. The platform is highly visual, easy to use, and has specific account types for educators.

Pages

Pages is a great example of how the traditional barriers to publishing are being broken down and handed to people in intuitive platforms that promote the production of high-quality content. Apple believes in the quality of Pages enough to enable people to publish the books they have created in the Apple Books store and generate a profit from their work.

However, let’s slow down for a second. What can learners do with it? Well, it’s as easy as putting together a PowerPoint presentation. With its simple click-and-drag style functionality, learners can turn their reports and assignments into books, create stories, and even create a class textbook to use as a study tool. They can insert pictures, videos, graphics and embed web widgets to make their books interactive and engaging. They can then share the final product online to create a timeless resource for their peers.

Action Movie FX

Action Movie FX is a little more fun. Still, the iOS app also serves as a case study for how easy making engaging videos has become over the last few years.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most grown-up, responsible men went through a period in their childhood when they dreamed they were the stars in their own action movie, which is exactly what Action Movie FX does. The app uses the iPhone camera to shoot video. You can easily add effects like missiles, tornadoes, lightning strikes, falling rocks and machine gunfire.

So this is one for the older kids. Still, it is nonetheless an excellent way for learners to get comfortable with making videos and have fun with this app.

Podcasting

A standard laptop computer comes with all required to make a podcast, barring downloading a new piece of software. Once you have your microphone and recording program, you’re ready to join the audio platform that acts as the radio of the 21st Century. Learners can turn assignments into documentaries and presentations into talk shows on this versatile medium. They can even record musical performances or recreate radio dramas and comedies of days gone by. To create podcasts in the classroom, simply:

  • Record audio with a cheap microphone (or your computers) into Garageband, which comes with a Mac, or Audacity (an open-source audio recording program) if you are using another operating system.
  • Edit audio in the program you have used. You don’t have to be a sound engineer and can possess a tin ear for this step. The important thing is using the scissor tool to trim parts of the recording you don’t want to feature.
  • If your learners are comfortable with these programs, they can get creative with music and sound effects which they can search for and download from places like freesound.org.
  • Compress the file to an mp3.
  • Upload the podcast to a class portal – a blog, podcast hosting site, or social media channel like SoundCloud.
  • Share their creations amongst the class, other classes, or the world!

 

So, it’s time to get creating in the classroom! Making movies, podcasts, magazines, and books are substantially easier than ever. It’s an excellent way to teach storytelling and vital digital literacy skills. You may even inspire a learner on the way.