TeachLikeAPioneer

Artwork created by AP Studio Art student Lindy Plunkett ‘18

This school year, the faculty and staff of Providence High School are discovering the power of a hashtag! Made popular through social media, the hashtag (#) symbol provides an innovative opportunity for our adults to seek out meaningful connections for their own professional growth.

The faculty and staff at Providence have the ability, influence, and responsibility to make a positive impact on a daily basis in the classroom and beyond. Oftentimes, their greatest impact is made by the example that they model for our students. Our students look to our teachers not only to learn content, but more importantly to learn about learning. To truly be pioneer educators, our adults are striving to distinguish themselves as the lead learners on campus. At the start of this school year, we introduced two innovative initiatives and encouraged our teachers to become connected educators. Professional development is an expectation of all educators in the profession of teaching. However, at Providence, we have considered ways to make that more personalized and innovative.

Twitter for Professional Development

In education, contrary to common belief, most of what teachers do is done in complete isolation. Teachers are assigned individual classrooms and they are separated by discipline for an entire school

By Allison DeFrancesco Castro ‘02, Principal

year. The traditional nature of schools does not accommodate for or encourage collaboration or connectedness. Therefore, it becomes necessary for teachers to intentionally seek out their colleagues for ideas and feedback. At Providence, collaboration is encouraged and now, faculty and staff are becoming more connected by tweeting! Twitter is a popular social media platform that most people use to connect with celebrities and news sources. However, what sets this social media platform apart from all others like Facebook and Snapchat, is that it allows people to connect with others over ideas, not individuals and pre-existing relationships (@naval, Tweet, Jan. 2017). Our faculty and staff have been encouraged to establish their own professional Twitter account.

Since August, a number of us have connected with other educators, innovators, and leaders around the country. Using a dedicated hashtag, #TeachLikeaPioneer, the faculty and staff are sharing what’s happening in our own classrooms, on campus, and even on athletic fields and courts. A teacher in our Visual Arts Department, Mrs. Courtney Abruzzo, demonstrates how Twitter can be a valuable tool for professional use. Mrs. Abruzzo currently teaches AP Studio Art, AP Art History, and ceramics and she actively uses Twitter to find and highlight relevant articles and ideas that emphasize the meaningful relevance that visual arts enables for our students. She is not only reading and discovering fascinating articles in support of her own discipline; most poignantly, she is sharing these ideas with her colleagues, emphasizing her own passion for visual arts, and working in support of our visual arts at Providence.

Twitter is proving to be a tool which enables us to share on a platform beyond the classroom to become more globally connected educators. Social media is often viewed somewhat negatively in schools due to the public and permanent nature of what can be posted. In the past, students might have connected with Pen Pal students across the country, but now, students connect within seconds with anyone they choose. That kind of opportunity cannot and should not be ignored in education. At Providence, we must not fail to see the educational value in a tool that is an everyday reality for the students we serve. Our students are connected to networks beyond their homes through the use of their phones and social media. With our faculty and staff’s use of Twitter for professional development, we now have a platform through which teachers can serve as model digital citizens for our students. In the past, teachers could collaborate with someone in their building on a single lesson and now, teachers can peer into a limitless number of classrooms around the world to borrow and share ideas.

#ObserveMe Challenge

Serving as models of learning, each faculty member at Providence began the school year by identifying one professional growth goal. We began with the important foundational belief that we all have areas of growth and that we can always improve upon what we do. However, what we have discovered is that if our areas of growth are not visible and at the forefront, we risk missing opportunities for support. In order to share our focus for improvement, each faculty member created an #ObserveMe poster that lists select growth areas and questions, inviting feedback from colleagues and supervisors during observations. These posters are displayed on all classroom doors and they allow observers to offer targeted feedback that is directly relevant to teachers’ personal growth goals. Although it may seem simple, it is rather profound. The creator of the nationwide #ObserveMe challenge, Robert Kaplinsky, emphasizes that the posters created by faculty “[show] that we have a growth mindset and are willing to make sacrifices if they result in being a better educator for our students.” A quality educator is no longer defined as an expert in their discipline or field. As educators in 2017, we are called to be the lead learners in a classroom and model a growth mindset, and as colleagues, we have an opportunity to help one another learn, grow, and improve.

Providence faculty and staff are encouraged and expected to complete peer observations, called Walkabouts, during the school year. These Walkabouts facilitate positive collegiality and collaboration between teachers. Now, with the addition of the #ObserveMe posters, this exercise metaphorically breaks down the walls that separate our classrooms and feedback is not only welcomed, it is craved.

Our educators are serving our students by dedicating themselves to the transformational work of teaching and learning. We do so with the legacy of the Sisters of Providence as our foundation, so that we too constantly strive to serve the needs of today while remaining faithful to the Mission. Through their pioneering efforts in health care, social service, and education, the Sisters of Providence continue to inspire all of us here at Providence High School to #TeachLikeaPioneer.