Angel Worth is a graduate of The University of Oklahoma. She is in her first year as a freshman English teacher, and she decided to attend the Summit to engage in meaningful dialogue and better understand those who support “school choice.”

Into the Lions’ Den
 
This past Thursday, the Oklahoma School Choice Summit and Expo was held at Oklahoma City Community College. The summit began at 4:00, and after ushering straggling students out of my classroom, grading a handful of late papers, and prepping the next day’s lesson plan, I strode out of the high school brimming with both fire and fear.
 
Upon arriving at OCCC, I sat in my car for a full fifteen minutes, staring through the windshield at the signs directing the public to the Performing Arts Center. I’m a first year teacher, so feeling out of my depth is no rarity for me. However, the feeling that gripped me as I walked up the sidewalk and into the summit was a different kind of displacement. I’d never really considered the phrase, “into the lion’s den,” until I stumbled over my name at the check-in table and allowed a young, smiling woman to slip a yellow band around my wrist. Dozens of people stood across the lobby. Most were dressed in tailored business suits and dresses, and nearly all wore a yellow scarf draped around their necks. The scarves were handed out as people checked in, but because I did not register in advance, I was not offered one.
 
After looking over the itinerary I had picked up at the check-in table, I picked the three breakout sessions I was interested in attending, and I made my way to the adjacent building.
 
Charter School “101”
 
Brent Bushey, the Executive Director of Oklahoma Public Resource Center, facilitated the “Charter School 101” session. Bushey is a tall, but soft spoken man. He wore a wrinkled navy blue suit, and he shuffled from one foot to the other while clasping and unclasping his hands throughout his presentation. Using charter school jargon, Bushey explained the process for how charter schools are opened, and in the last twenty minutes of the session, Bushey opened the floor to questions.
 
I searched the room for a friendly face, trying to identify if there was a Public Education ally in the room, but I was alone. The slogan on the banner at the back of the room caught my eye, “Every Child. Every Choice. Every Chance.” I took a shaky breath and raised my hand to ask for clarification on concerns I’ve heard echoed throughout the Public Education community.
 
“How do charter schools budget the money that the state allocates to them, and how transparent is that budget?” I asked. I could hear my own voice quavering. After stating that charter schools are tracked the same way public schools are, Bushey shared a surprising statistic.
 
“50-70% of charter schools that are closed are closed due to financial problems,” he said.
 
“So charter schools close most often due to financial mismanagement?” The words had left my mouth before I could bring them back.
 
Bushey shuffled, “It’s less an issue of mismanagement and more so financial incompetence.”
 
Perhaps to Bushey incompetence sounds better than mismanagement, but, as an English teacher, I couldn’t help but be appalled at the connotation associated with a word like incompetence. Is it supposed to be comforting that charter schools across the nation are shut down because they’re too incompetent to properly write a budget? Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, public schools across the state continue to function as their budgets are slashed and their funds are bleeding because of the “incompetence” of our state legislature to do the same thing. That’s a difference between public and private schools that is worth noting: in the face of anything, public schools have the resilience and commitment to their students to keep their doors open.
 
Emboldened, I asked another question, “When comparing public, charter, and private schools, the concept of attrition is almost never acknowledged on behalf of charter and private schools. As a public school teacher,” I glanced around the room, “I feel like there are several steps taken before a student is removed from public school. Charter schools have much higher attrition rates, which makes me wonder what process do charter and private schools follow to have students removed from their programs? And what liberties do charter schools take in admitting students with learning disabilities and disciplinary issues?”
 
Pivoting away from the topic of attrition, Bushey instead decided to address the latter half of the question. Bushey identified himself as a past teacher of students with disabilities and also as a father of a daughter with Down Syndrome. He shared an anecdote of his experience when he first moved to Oklahoma. He called a charter school to see if they would accept his daughter, and they said yes. He then asked them if they had a Special Education program, to which they said no.
 
“This is where it becomes a matter of school choice,” Bushey said. “I could have sent my daughter to that charter school, but instead I chose a school that was the best fit for her.”
 
What I got out of Bushey’s story was that a charter school was willing to accept his daughter despite not having the necessary program to ensure her success, which begs the question: what are IEP and 504 programs like at charter and private schools? Are these schools in compliance with IDEA? Do these schools know what IDEA is? *cough cough DeVos*
 
Advocacy for School Leaders
 
Before I could ask anymore, the session was over, and I was on my way to a session called “Advocacy for School Leaders.” The session was facilitated by Matt Ball of CMA Strategies and former Representative Hopper Smith of Strategic Resource Consulting. The goal was to teach those present how to elevate those in favor of school choice from “passive stakeholders” to “active advocates.”
 
Outside of Matt Ball referencing Waiting for Superman as an informative source on charter schools, what caught my attention most took the form of an older man named Charlie Daniels, who I later found out is the Vice President of the Opportunity Scholarship Fund. With both Senator Pederson (District 19) and Senator Rader (District 39) in attendance, Daniels provided scathing criticism of local school boards.
 
“The school board is the captive of administration,” Daniels said. “Most of them are sinkers; you cannot change their mind with a bomb.”
 
A few moments later, Daniels went on to say, “You’ve gotta go beyond the local school board. They’re going to be your enemy.”
 
It was at this point that Hopper Smith became visibly uncomfortable as he nervously laughed and claimed that “enemy is a strong word.” Daniels went on to tell about a time that he spent a day at the Capitol going from office to office of elected officials. He said that one time, he stopped in at a legislator’s office whose district Daniels was not a part of. Daniels told the legislator that he should vote in favor of whatever school choice bill was on the docket that session, and the legislator responded by saying, “Thank God. I’ve been getting hundreds of phone calls from Public Education people all day, and now if I vote for this I can say I’ve got some cover.”
 
It’s good to know that our legislators will disregard the voices of hundreds of constituents in favor of one person’s opinion if it serves the legislator’s own self-interest. In case the legislator has forgotten, their jobs exist to serve their constituents. Their jobs do not exist to serve themselves.
 
Moving on.
 
Communities of Color Panel
 
The next session on the list was one called “Communities of Color Panel.” Before entering the room, however, I had an informative mini-session in the form of a conversation I overheard between former State Superintendent of Education Janet Barresi and keynote speaker Dr. Steve Perry.
 
I initially became aware of the conversation when the words “Betsy DeVos could be good for us,” came out of Barresi’s mouth, but my favorite part of the conversation was when Barresi complained about the “quality of educators that colleges of education are producing.”
 
Dr. Perry guffawed loudly and replied, “That whole sentence is an oxymoron.”
 
It took everything in me not to step forward and identify myself as a public school teacher. Instead, I took deep breaths, pictured the goddess of education that is current Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, and followed Barresi into the next session.
 
The communities of color panel was comprised of Dr. Steve Perry, Phillip Gover of Sovereign Schools Project, and Marilinda Garcia of the Libre Initiative. I most looked forward to this session because I wanted to see how the panel addressed the research that suggests charter and private schools compound the issue of systemic racism. Instead, Dr. Perry said in his opening statement, “We are taking a system that was designed in 1635 that was designed to keep certain communities apart...and has so effectively done it, that it almost seems natural.” Dr. Perry went on to suggest that teachers are the hostages of unions to which we pay our ransom (union dues), and that the public school system is too traditional and racist.
 
Now, I acknowledge that there is inequity in the public school system. Schools that are located in areas of dense poverty are attended by predominately students of color, and these schools often have lower graduation rates. However, the solution is not to open up charter schools so that portions of the student bodies in lower-income schools are pulled out. What about the students who are left behind? The students who don’t make it off the wait list? They’re left to attend a school that has even less funding. In Oklahoma City, in particular, these students would be left in classrooms that are filled with unqualified and uncertified teachers because of a massive teacher shortage. The solution to this problem is not to open more schools, it’s to fund the school that stands, starting with teacher salaries, to ensure quality teachers are present to provide a quality education. As much as the summit reiterated that the student is the most important part of education, they must recognize that students’ education starts with their teacher.
 
Before the last session dismissed, the room was notified that a protestor, allegedly, pulled the fire alarm in the theater to prevent the second part of the program from happening. Dr. Perry laughed joyously at this.
 
“I’ve been to a lot of cities, man,” he said. “And ain’t no city where they’re pulling fire alarms. To those protestors: you showed us that we hurt you by hollering. Keep hollering because we’re going to hurt you some more.”
 
This was met with whoops and hollers as those in the room stood to begin their walk back to the Performing Arts Center.
 
Main Program
 
It just so happened that I was behind Janet Barresi on the way back to the Performing Arts Center, so I was lucky enough to see her reaction when we reached the doors to find dozens of pro-Public Education people standing in line, waiting to be admitted to the summit.
 
Barresi rolled her eyes and shared a look with the woman who had been accompanying her, and they pushed their way through the line to get into the lobby. As I had already checked in, I followed.
 
When I reached the front of the line I realized that those who were waiting to check-in were being turned away. Most of them clutched Event Brite registration confirmation tickets in their hands, and one man at the front of line began to get irate.
 
I asked one of the summit event’s coordinators why the group of people waiting to get in were being denied access to the public event. He claimed that those organizing the summit had caught wind of a protest group on Facebook, and so they cross referenced the list of people who were associated with the Facebook group and the people who had registered for the event, and the summit’s organizers canceled the group’s tickets.
 
I found out later, however, that several pro-Public Education people were turned away who had no affiliation with the protest group on Facebook, which leads one to wonder what sources the summit organizers were using to decide who could and who could not attend a “public forum”?
 
I did not stay for the entirety of the main program that was held in the Performing Arts Center’s theater because I needed to go to the store to buy supplies for the project my students were doing the following day. I did, however, stay long enough to hear Rep. Jason Nelson moderate a panel comprised of Sen. Stanislawski, Sen. Loveless, Rep. Chuck Strohm, and Rep. Calvey.
 
The panel was essentially five men tossing around school choice buzzwords to incite applause from the audience. I’m currently teaching rhetoric to my freshman, and I was almost tempted to start recording the panel in order to have my students analyze and identify the heavy use of pathos and the noticeable lack of ethos and logos in each of the legislator’s arguments for school choice.
 
As I drove away from the Oklahoma School Choice summit Thursday night, I reflected on what it means to be a public school teacher in the current political climate. Oklahoma teachers have been fighting the state legislator for many years to protect Public Education, and now that fight might find itself carried to the national level with the nomination of Betsy DeVos.
 
With every anti-Public Ed proposed legislative bill that I read, I feel my faith in the future of Oklahoma public school’s diminish. After leaving an environment where public school teachers like myself were categorized as union thugs, racist, selfish, and inept, my passion for public school teaching was reignited. Since Thursday, I’ve thought back to Dr. Perry’s words again and again, “You showed us that we hurt you by hollering. Keep hollering because we’re going to hurt you some more.”
 
Dr. Perry and many of the other speakers at the summit are not from Oklahoma, so perhaps they won’t understand. However, I feel it necessary to warn them not to mistake determination for being “hurt.” Don’t be so foolish as to misinterpret grit for fear. The war on Public Education has been waging in Oklahoma for many years now, and though it’s been trying and adverse, public schools and their teachers have persevered—and we will keep on persevering. 

My freshmen were given a very unique opportunity to submit essays, poems, or stories for the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series. My students were excited for the chance to actually have their words in at that time a well-known published series. I was happy for the seriousness and excitement to which students took to the task.
 
Since the students’ writings had to be mailed to California, there were strict deadlines. I, of course, stressed the point that no late writings would be accepted. Even the teacher had deadlines to meet on this project!
 
On the day the final copy was due, I had a call from the main office informing me I had a visitor. Waiting to speak with me was a grandparent of one of my freshman, JD, who just so happened to be absent that day. JD was new to our school his freshman year. He was a quiet, very reserved, average student who seemed to prefer to be left alone. As his grandmother and I talked, she clutched a large, manila envelope. She shared with me some history about JD, a history in which I had absolutely no idea.
 
She told me how JD did not want to go to school this day, but he knew how important it was to submit his paper regardless. I smiled. My message got through to at least one student! His grandmother began to tell me about the content of JD’s paper which she held securely in her hand. My students’ assignment was to write a story, poem, or essay that had to fall under specific categories for the requirements of the book series. He choose to write under the category Death and Dying.  JD wrote about the events of April 19, 1995 in Oklahoma City.
 
JD’s mom worked in downtown OKC at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. JD was only 10 years old in 1995. He wrote about how excited he was that day when he was sent to the office to go home early with his grandfather and his aunt. In his elementary student mind, he thought it was a special surprise to go out to lunch, but he noticed they had been crying and both of them looked upset.  They took him to his home where he met several family members all gathered around the television watching news updates and local, live broadcasts of the event that forever changed his life and his family.  
 
He noticed his mother was not in the room with the family. As he watched the news and saw the rubble that once was the building in which his mother worked, he realized there was a chance his mom would not return home. He saw people of all ages pulled from the wreckage on stretchers and his family desperately looked at the scrolling list of names at the bottom of the screen that reported people who had been rescued.
 
His mother didn’t come home that Wednesday night or Thursday night, or the night after that. It was over 2 weeks after the bombing and JD’s family finally received news she had been found. JD’s mom worked on the seventh floor of the Murrah Federal Building and she was discovered on the second floor 2 ½ weeks after the bombing. His mom was one of 168 people who did not survive the domestic terrorist bombing of the federal building in downtown Oklahoma City.
 
When his grandmother finished telling me about JD’s mom, her daughter, and the contents of his paper, we were both in tears. I weakly explained to her that there were other categories he could have selected from to write for the assignment. JD’s grandmother said he assured her he wanted to write about the event; it was something he felt he needed to do, and she expressed how it had been a strengthening experience for him. His counselor for the last 5 years agreed. She handed me the brown, manila envelope as she left. I knew I would see JD differently now because of his strength and this tragedy he experienced at such a young age.
 
Several months later, I received official notice some of my students’ stories made the final selection for the book Chicken Soup for the Pre-Teen Soul. JD’s essay was one of them! We were both so very proud that his healing words would be a part of the publication. JD and I both received autographed copies from all the authors of the book that contained his essay. This autographed copy is one of my prized pieces from one of my students and his work. 

I avoided the call into the classroom for several years before I succumbed to what was clearly in my blood.  I worked in Public Relations.  I planned events, golf tournaments, social events, fundraisers, and even a popular telethon, but nothing made my heart pitter pat like driving by a local middle or high school remembering the texts that spoke to me most clearly in my youth.  Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, Oh English Language Arts friends, need I go on?  All I could think of was my rock star, educator of a mother in my ear, “You are missing your calling, sweet girl.”  I didn’t want to live her life, but try as I may I could avoid the call no longer.  Taking the Alternative Education route, I had no formal, college training to be a teacher.  Being in the classroom for the first time was scary and exhilarating and absolutely what I was meant to do with my life.  The relationships with the students came easy.  Teaching procedures, getting compliance, that part of teaching I was able to do well when I put in the work on the forefront.  I’m a naturally outgoing person and I enjoyed being around the kids and leveraging relationships to get the best possible work from my students.  But… and there is a big ‘BUT,’ I was teaching the exact way I had been taught.  I pulled my ‘English Teacher Stool’ up to the front of my class; I sat my students in straight rows facing the front; I plopped my booty in my stool and I read from the literature book.  When the story was over, I handed out what I affectionately nicknamed later as a “Shut up Sheet.”  Honestly, I didn’t know any better. 

A few years later, I happened across a YouTube video of Mr. Ron Clark of the Ron Clark Academy.  A former Disney Teacher of the year, author of The Essential 55, and I mean, come on, a made-for-TV movie played by the one and only Chandler Bing…Matthew Perry.  I watched enthralled as Ron Clark described the exact stool I perched on and he called it, “The Stool of Drool.”  I shuddered in abhorrence as he explained how education should be different.  As educators, we should up the ante.  As educators, we should up the rigor as well as the entertainment level in our classrooms.  It was the first I had heard of such a thing.  I started to change.  I YouTubed exceptional teachers; I went and observed mentor teachers and master educators in action.  Who needed a gym membership if one could move in the classroom in such a way that 20,000 steps were achieved on a daily basis?  I immersed myself in brain research; I learned that gum chewing was good for students’ brains (no, I did not just speak teacher blasphemy).  Brain research also shows that children should never sit for more minutes than their age.  Meaning in a class that is 55 minutes, my students needed to get up and move three to four times in an hour.  My mind was blown.  The change in my teaching continued.  We learned to make up songs to remember and apply grammar; we worked collaboratively in groups.  I gamified my classroom, so students would compete and work on leveling up.  I learned that in our ‘everybody gets a trophy’ mentality and culture, my students really believed that ‘everybody gets a trophy.’  They were beside themselves when they didn’t win the vocab competition for the week.  “But, it’s not fair,” they would whine, “Can I have a starburst anyway?”  It motivated them; they started to take charge of their own learning.  Gamification speaks to the students.  In a world with Playstation 1-8, Minecraft, iPhone, iPad, iChat, Instagram, SnapChat, iEVERYTHING, we are competing with the changing face of technology, and video games.  Gamification speaks to the video gamers; it speaks to the athletes; it speaks to our youth.  When I gamified my teaching, I saw huge gains in student engagement and achievement.  Gamification was another piece in my education puzzle away from the ‘Stool of Drool,’ and the land of straight rows and ‘Shut up Sheets.’  But something was still missing.  That is when I got ahold of Dave Burgess’ Teach Like a Pirate.

If you are not a fan of Dave Burgess, I urge you to jump on that #tlap bandwagon.  I read his book cover to cover and then I read it again.  Like a lifeline, the book came to life on the page; it spoke directly to my heart.  Burgess teaches history to high schoolers.  He was known to come to class dressed as Rosie the Riveter, or in full, head-to-toe Salem Witch Trial outfits while he was in the classroom.  He did this in order to hook his students into his content.  He writes about creating experiences for your students.  “What are your LCL’s?”  he asks, “Life Changing Lessons!”  He poses the question, “If your students didn’t have to be there, would you be teaching to an empty classroom?”  He transformed his classroom into a Speakeasy while teaching about prohibition complete with sprite and cherries, him dressed as a gangster, and the students had to have the password to get into class.  WHAT!?  How fun!  Engaged children are rarely a behavior problem.  “How can I tailor this for English,” I thought to myself.  I went to the store and bought fake candles on sale for half price; I used black butcher paper to black out my windows when I taught anything by Edgar Allan Poe.  As we said goodbye to Anne Frank after reading her play, my students took the fake candles, held them up, and switched them off; we sat in almost, utter darkness listening to a somber song as we said goodbye and grieved the Frank family.  It moved their emotions and tears were okay I reassured them.  I transform my classroom into a poetry lounge during National Poetry Month complete with hot chocolate, hipster scarves, bongos, and instruments as we recite poetry we have analyzed.  The ideas for ELA are endless.  Just last week my 7th graders read Rod Serlings’ “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.”  I stood on a table as the Mission Impossible theme song blared in the background.  I set up my room with a crime scene.  I bought a cheap police hat at the costume store; I encouraged the students to get inside as a crime had just been committed.  My 7th graders ate it up; they called me ‘Officer Kinder’ the whole day. We worked in collaborative groups trying to find the culprit with cut up pieces of text on their desks. 

What is that saying? “If you haven’t failed in the classroom recently, then you are playing it too safe.”  Oh, and fail I do.  Sometimes a lesson doesn’t quite work the way I saw it in my mind’s eye, but onward I trudge.  I Teach Like a Pirate with Life Changing Lessons; I have left the ‘Stool of Drool’ behind me, ‘Shut Up Sheets’ are no more because life is fun and learning should be fun and teaching is most definitely fun. 

Ask any teacher who has been in the classroom for a year or more how he or she views professional development activities and workshops. The reply received might be accompanied with an eye roll, heavy sigh, and overall sense of exasperation. According to Lieberman and Wood (2003), “as teachers have known and research has shown, ‘professional development’ of teachers has been notoriously unsuccessful,” and “there is little knowledge about how, or even if, professional development organized for teachers ever finds its way into classrooms to enlarge teachers’ repertoires and enhance student learning” (p. 3). Teachers may not always see the usefulness or effectiveness of professional development because of their own negative experiences as participants being talked at about topics they either cared little or nothing about or saw little or no relevance to their own teaching and/or students.

Even if the content presented is relevant, the presentation style might not allow for collaboration and social learning with and from one another. It is all too common that teachers leave professional development settings without strategies, ideas, or activities to implement in their own classrooms. Hill (2009) discusses how “teachers themselves are lukewarm about their professional development experiences” (p. 472). Lukewarm feelings could very well leave teachers unsatisfied and unfulfilled in regards to the (lack of) professional development they experience. These lukewarm feelings might stem from outside “experts” presenting professional development to teachers with little knowledge of the teachers’ context, needs, and individual and collective strengths and challenges. This traditional notion of professional development involving an outsider “developing” a group of teachers is often unsuccessful; teachers’ experiences during these types of opportunities are likely negative. In accordance, Gray (2000) describes teachers as “cynical of most school staff development efforts” (p. 49).  

As a former middle school teacher, I think back to the many 7:30 a.m. professional development meetings and workshops in which I participated. I use the term “participated” lightly – usually I was answering emails, grading papers I should have graded the night before, or working on my lesson plan for the day. I have lost count of the number of hours, days, and maybe even weeks spent in this type of setting that I feel was wasted because it did not affect my educational philosophy or practice. I would rarely learn or do anything during these sessions that I could use in my classroom. So, my colleagues and I often checked out to attend to business that mattered since the professional development certainly did not. Lieberman and Mace note that “professional development, thought well intentioned, is often perceived by teachers as fragmented, disconnected, and irrelevant to the real problems of classroom practice” (2008, p. 226). Although, through informal conversations, I can attest that I am not alone in these experiences, I wonder how other teachers have experienced professional development activities.    

In the past few years, four particular professional development venues have opened my eyes to what professional development can and should be:
- K20 Center for Educational and Community Renewal 
- Oklahoma Council of Teachers of English's conferences 
- Oklahoma Writing Project Summer Institute 
- National Council of Teachers of English Annual Convention 

I now know that professional development can be: 
- Meaningful
- Applicable 
- Useful 
- Engaging 
- Transformative 
- Collaborative 
- Powerful 
- Fun!

What about you? What are your experiences with professional development? What is "good" professional development, in your opinion? What's the best professional development you've attended? Please share your ideas in the comments section. 

Also, submit a proposal and register for the 2016 OKCTE Fall Conference, held on the OU campus on October 1, 2016. Imagine the potential power of this professional development if YOU participate! 

References 

Gray, J. (2000). Teachers at the center: A memoir of the early years of the national writing project. Berkeley, CA: National Writing Project Cooperation. 

Hill, H. C. (2009). Fixing teacher professional development. Phi Delta Kappan, 90(7), 470-476.

Lieberman, A., & Mace, D. H. P. (2008). Teacher learning: The key to educational reform. Journal of Teacher Education, 59(3), 226-234.

Lieberman, A., & Wood, D.R. (2003). Inside the national writing project: Connecting network learning and classroom teaching. New York: Teachers College Press.

Over the course of 2006 to 2016 I’ve been a classroom teacher, ACT prep tutor, literacy coordinator, and state department director. (I’m not about to include all the part-time jobs I held during this time, but thanks Foley’s! I appreciate your patience with me despite my lack of thread count knowledge.) After capping off my first decade in the education profession, I basically know all there is to know about teaching. Right? Nope. Not even close. There’s so much 21st century educators need to add to their skill set and it doesn’t come from standard college of education course work.
Below are the ten actions and insights I’ve had after reflecting on ten years in education.

#10 | Ten years and still learning.
The experiences within the four walls of a classroom make a direct impact to the outside world and the outside world makes a direct impact to the classroom. On January 1st, 2001, we entered the 21st century. If you’re like me, there was little choice in the matter. Ready or not, we’re here now. How has it impacted your classroom? It’s likely a number of changes have taken place in your school, district, and community. Remember what high school was like without smart phones? 
Technology continues to expand in availability and functionality. It is making students more aware, influencing their perspective on life, and they bring it all to the classroom hoping for your clarifying wisdom and guidance - whether they admit it or not. 
Once upon a time, I day dreamed about being that legendary teacher with untold years of experience under my belt. The kind that could walk into any classroom, immediately take over using my instinctual, classroom management abilities gained from years of experience, and turn a room full of reluctant students into a die hard Shakespeare fan club. But that’s never going to happen.
I can have all the answers, but students also have all the answers at their fingertips. I could never keep up with the availability of information thanks to the advancements of technology. Too much “new” is created each day. What’s worse, it’s actually really, really good “new” stuff that’s being created! It’s “new” stuff that’s worth exploring in the classroom! It’s deep and engaging and our students are influenced by it. I need to keep up with it if I’m going to keep up with my students and keep my curriculum relevant.

#9 | Blog.
Instinct is hard to explain and teach. 21st century teachers share - victories, defeats, confusion, and risky ideas. Especially risky ideas! Break down, step-by-step, what you do well and how you do it. Break down what you don’t do well, too.
I’m almost upset my college of education coursework didn’t require self-reflective blogging. There is a collective knowledge base that already exists thanks to blogging educators and it needs to be expanded. Have you ever met a teachers with 15, 20, 30 years of experience and just started talking about pedagogy? That kind of knowledge is gold and should be documented! Document your journey in this profession and help all teachers grow. Add your insights to the ever expanding collective.

#8 | Build Your Brand.
Legendary teachers are those great educators that every student just seems to know, regardless if they had them as a teacher. They have a reputation and students revere and honor it. Parents know what happens in that teacher's classroom and students want to experience it. That legendary teacher has developed a brand - an expectation that they’ve developed and everyone wants to experience.
Teachers need room and support to develop their unique brand. It requires a lot of experimenting with pedagogies and personality, which is more time consuming than purchasing and enforcing a stock curriculum. However, the time spent to develop a teacher’s understanding of pedagogies produces a greater return on investment.

#7 | Teach like an entrepreneur.
Like teachers, entrepreneurs manage multiple moving parts of a system. Like teachers, entrepreneurs weigh multiple commodities to make decisions. Like teachers, entrepreneurs take educated-risks to, hopefully, produce big gains. Like teachers, entrepreneurs are careful when making investment decisions.
Time and energy are the commodities of educators and there’s never enough. Here’s the crux: time cannot be replenished and energy takes time to replenish. When planning on classroom activities, I find it helpful to use an entrepreneurial lens to assess where to spend my time and energy.
In the classroom, time is a scarce commodity. It’s the only commodity we cannot recreate once it’s lost! However, through thoughtful planning, we can leverage technology to maximize our time. Don’t worry about teaching students how to use tech and apps to enhance their learning. Start learning about the technologies that will improve your professional and personal life.

#6 | Tech was made for teachers!
Some believe technology should be purchased to benefit students. I like to think technology exists to improve a teacher’s life. If it isn’t helping you to be more productive, more organized, and a more effective (less stressed) educator, it’s not worth the investment.
Don’t worry. Students will catch up to the technology you’re using. Honestly, they’re probably already three steps ahead of the technology you’re using.

#5 | Find your community. If you can’t find your community, build it.
I depend on the support of others. Some are like-minded and some are constantly challenging my ideas; both are beneficial. Having a safe community of fellow educators is necessary. Participating in professional organizations with people you respect is revitalizing and cathartic. Seek out people that share your principles. There are many communities of professionals within our state and technology has helped allow us to connect with each other. If you can’t find the right fit, leverage technology to build a new community. Have you ever heard of Facebook? It’s pretty neat. Once a community with shared principles is organized, learning starts to become more meaningful… and a lot more fun.

#4 | If you think PD is boring, do something about it.
Boring PD is our fault. I’m taking about all of us and including me. Don’t let boring PD suck up valuable time. Sit in the front. Participate. Take notes. As a last resort, feign interest and write some awesome lesson plans or a list of all the ways you would lead a better PD workshop. Then go do that workshop.

#3 | Test Stress doesn’t need to be passed on to students.
Our students deal with enough stress and don’t really know how to manage it.
Growing up is already stressful. High stakes tests only add to that stress. The last thing students need is to absorb our stress. If you’re stressed, your students feel it. Don’t let test stress get to you because it will trickle down to your students. That’s why we all need stress-reducing hobbies.

#2 | Don’t quit your hobby.
Besides teaching, there must be something you love doing just for you - something entirely self serving and enjoyable. I’ve learned the hard way how easy it is to give that one thing up. There’s a lot of good reasons to quit a hobby - money, the need to spend quality time with the family, too much work to do, et cetera. None are good reasons to completely give up a hobby.
Invest in your long-term sanity by prioritizing a personal hobby. Sure you might not have as much time to invest, but commit to a certain amount per week/month. Your students and family will thank you.

#1 | Advocacy.
We cannot survive by keeping our heads down and our classroom doors shut. I think this is the most important realization I’ve had over the course of my career. There are certain aspects of our profession that may never be perfect and they’re never going to improve without teacher advocacy.
I’m not political and never intended to be, yet it’s evident that this is one more responsibility we need to include on an ever growing list of priorities. Change happens when educated people connect, organize, and vocalize educated ideas. Our school system needs your educated ideas.