social media

Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation

Why School Leaders Should Never Get Into a Twitter War With Kanye West

Responding impulsively to negative comments on social media will only make the problem worse.

By Luvelle Brown

Kanye West is at it again.

The Grammy-winning rapper turned ubiquitous social media bully has a knack for getting under people’s skin. First it was former girlfriend Amber Rose. Then Taylor Swift. Kanye’s 21.7 million (and counting) Twitter followers can hardly wait to see who, or what, ends up in his online crosshairs next.

So far-reaching is the rapper’s social sniping that President Obama himself has weighed in, calling Kanye a “Jack#$!” for the way he lashed out at Ms. Swift.

As a school district superintendent who uses social media daily to engage his community, I can’t help but cringe every time one of Kanye’s social digs lights the Twitterverse on fire.

Love Kanye or hate him, it makes no difference to Kanye–so long as Kanye keeps trending.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>Everyone has made mistakes. I just make them in public.</p>&mdash; KANYE WEST (@kanyewest) <a href=”https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/712426781245050880″>March 22, 2016</a></blockquote>

<script async src=”//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″></script>

Only in Hollywood
That sort of a mea culpa might fly if you’re an egomaniacal rap superstar with a nose for controversy. But making mistakes in public is exactly the kind of folly that lands school leaders and other public figures in hot water.

If you’re reading this thinking, “More evidence to steer clear of social media,” you’re missing the point. There’s a reason that Kanye’s social media missives make headlines. Research shows that parents and students increasingly communicate online. A recent Pew Research study found that 79% of parents get “useful information” via their social networks. A similar Pew study found that 65% of adults use social media, a tenfold increase from a decade ago. The same study found that social media use is nearly ubiquitous among teens and college-age students.

The majority of your community is already on social media. They’re asking questions and sharing information–true or otherwise–about your schools. And they expect you to be there too. The question isn’t whether you should use social media; it’s how to use it responsibly to meet the changing needs of your school community.

At Ithaca City, where I serve as superintendent, we use social media daily to connect with parents and students on a range of topics, from classroom teaching to school policy. There are risks. Every community has a Kanye or two. When you witness parents and others sniping at staff or spreading misinformation about your schools, there’s a tendency to engage without thinking. Tools such as Twitter and Facebook make putting your foot in your mouth easy.

Resist the urge to get down in the dirt with community members and others who use social media to stir up trouble. Monitor your social networks for controversial chatter and misinformation, and think before you post. There might be instances where the conversation is better conducted offline, via email, or in another setting that you can effectively control.

At Ithaca City, we use a solution called Let’s Talk! from K12 Insight. The cloud-based technology makes it possible to invite feedback from parents and community members through our district website. It also allows us to monitor our social networks from a single location. We know the instant someone mentions our schools or teachers online, giving us the time we need to a plan a smart response.

Next time someone calls you or your schools out on social media, don’t pull a Kanye. Take your time. Think. Then post. It’s simply amazing the difference a thoughtful response can make.

Looking for more ideas about how to use social media to engage your school community? Get more advice from me and other educators in The School Leader’s Definitive Guide to Navigating Social Media.

Luvelle Brown is superintendent of the Ithaca City School District in upstate New York.

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Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, Teachers

Building professional learning communities: Social media, ed camps, and meetups

**The Edvocate is pleased to publish guest posts as way to fuel important conversations surrounding P-20 education in America. The opinions contained within guest posts are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of The Edvocate or Dr. Matthew Lynch.**

A guest post by Madison Payton

Teachers sit in front of a sea of papers that must be graded. Curriculum needs to be mapped out and constantly revised to meet the needs of their scholars.  We attend meetings about how to bring rigor, engagement, and how to create Common Core aligned assessments to prepare scholars for state exams which determines our effectiveness as teachers. If the day to day, week to week, month to month tasks do not frustrate you, then we are placed in the role as counselors, social workers, surrogate parents, mediators, coaches, and advocates; and this is not just for a couple of scholars but practically all of them.  The system that was meant create learning communities has actually destroyed all that we have left as educators. Schools can’t possibly create and foster positive learning environments for scholars if the educators in front of them lack their own community to develop as effective and compassionate educators.

If we as communities are supposed to foster a positive culture among our scholars we must do the same for the teachers within these environments.  The answer is sometimes difficult to find within the school because we can turn into the gossip kids in the cafeteria focusing more on the problems then actual solutions. As teachers we have to think outside of the box and seek professional learning communities outside of our schools so that we can be critical of our practices and find solutions that can be applied throughout our schools.  Professional learning communities are essential to development of any educator because they enable the educator to engage and collaborate with a specific community that recurs in cycles of inquiry and actions that are grounded in research in order to better the academic and social development of the scholars they teach.

There are several ways we can build professional learning communities: searching on various social media platforms, professional meet-ups and content specific organizations, and summer PDs. Before you begin to spread your wings to build your network, make a list of specific objectives that incorporate your interests and needs that you wish to address from building and connecting with professional learning communities.  Once objectives are crafted then create strategies and benchmarks that will help you reach those objectives. Having a plan is important when diving into the world of building your professional learning community; it is not about working harder, it is about working smarter.

Below are some ways teachers can effectively build their own professional learning communities.

Twitter

Twitter is an amazing tool to use when you are trying to connect with educators from across the country. My wife showed me that if you are strategic you are always receiving a steady flow of information specific to your interests and needs.  Some cool features of twitter are specific chats that occur weekly or monthly. Some of the popular ones are: #edchat, #edtechchat,  #satchat, #engchat, #sschat, #digchat, etc. The more active you are in these chats usually means that you develop more connections that can build your professional learning community. You can also create lists specific to your interests and connect with like-minded educators. The benefit of having a list is that it allows you to specifically see what those educators are tweeting and allows better engagement. Again, the more specific you are about what you want and need the better these lists will be.

You can find more detailed information about each of these chats here: http://thejournal.com/articles/2013/09/23/13-twitter-chats-for-educators.aspx

Professional Meetup groups

These are the new rage because they are usually free and they connects educators with similar passions. It is important when building your professional learning community that you are engaging with people who are like you and who are not like you. The common ground is that we are in it to develop as educators and we can learn from different perspectives and methodologies of how to teach our scholars.

For more information go to www.meetup.com and search for groups of your interests. Here are my favorite groups:

Conferences and fellowships

These are great opportunities to be away with a group of professionals for a few days talking about real solutions to the problems that plague education. After these events are over you can stay in touch and reinforce best practices that were learned and maintain connections. These experiences also provide socio-emotional support that helps ensure the success and retention of good teachers like you. Programs are affordable or free depending on your interests and the competitiveness of the program.  A brand new program that I have been recently accepted into is the Stanford University Hollyhock Fellowship.  It was designed to give early career teachers the support needed to stay in the profession of education. The program is unique because it is competitive, free for participants, provides a $1000 stipend per year, and consists of yearlong professional development with mentors. This is a perfect place to grow your professional learning community because the fellowship already filters the applicant pool, which means fellows are passionate educators like you. After the conclusion of a fellowship or conference, your task is to just keep those contacts going and maintain your newfound relationships.

For more information about the program visit the following website: https://cset.stanford.edu/fellowships/hollyhock

Professional learning communities save our profession from dying and can renew educators’ commitment to the field. There is no better investment than diving into the world of self-reflection, challenges and exponential growth to be a better educator. After all, we can only be better educators for our scholars if we are actively engaged and learning just like we expect from those who are learning from us throughout the year.

Read all of our posts about EdTech and Innovation by clicking here.

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Madison Payton is an ELA educator at Eagle Academy For Young Men II located in Brownsville. His passions are professional development, reading and writing. He is establishing his school’s first writing center this fall, which he is really excited about all of the possibilities this resource can provide for his school community.
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