This week there were a lot of people who agreed that we need to be able to create an environment that facilitates social life for the students. By creating a community where the students feel comfortable creating and sharing their knowledge we help them to prepare for their futures. As teachers we are working on training our students to be productive citizens as adults. To help in this we need to keep them engaged and teach them how to be a part of a social network.
I had also mentioned how a lot of times teachers come back from trainings and don’t get up and share their new knowledge with their colleagues, so they tend to forget or lose that information. By allowing for a time to share that information we are using that social network to expand everyone’s knowledge. In the end, everyone wins. Not only do we need to share after conferences and/or trainings but our seasoned teachers have so much knowledge we can learn from them. To utilize this knowledge is so important as well. Collaboration among colleagues can create such a positive working environment and lift morale in the school.
My mentor project will be coming to a close this week. I am meeting with my mentee tomorrow morning to present Storybird to the students. I have created a few books, so I am going to use them to demonstrate what finished products look like. Then I will show them how to create a book of their own. Finally we will set them off to create their own books on their own (using laptops), with our guidance when needed of course. Later on in the week I will be interviewing my mentee to discover how she evaluates the effectiveness of our mentor project together.