As the start of the school year approached and the initial teacher trainings were complete, I was excited to get started. The first few days on the job were consumed by distributing all the tablets in the K-5 buildings and preparing for the chromebook distribution. I have to admit, organizing over 5,000 tablets (5 elementary schools) was quite the undertaking. Nevertheless, it was amazing to see how our team of 8 found a system and executed! After those few days the tagline for our team was confirmed. We were definitely ”The team that gets it done!”. We had so much fun together and truly were a well oiled machine within a few days!
The chromebooks were distributed to the students in an equally organized fashion. Within a few hours close to 1,400 students (2 middle schools) had chromebooks with labels, chargers and cases. The teachers and tech team were amazing in this process! It was the epitome of teamwork and success.....
Following the distribution of the devices, the support aspect of the job began. The first few weeks were crazy! Accounts needed to be created, teachers were eager to try things out, kids needed help getting into their chromebooks, chargers weren’t working, kids needed to be merged into correct classes, team pages needed to be up and running, teachers needed assistance….”how do I share folders?, how do I place this link on that page?, where is that folder?, what do I do with this message?, how do my kids see my page?, the devices aren’t working!!!, why isn’t this app working?, why isn’t this website working?, I swear that page was there yesterday, that’s not my account?!” …....LOL….… you get the picture. Needless to say lunch was not part of my schedule for the first 2 weeks of school. At that point I honestly questioned if accepting the EdTech position was the best decision. I think I can speak on behalf of the other 6 EdTechs within our district when I say we couldn’t catch our breath for the first 2 weeks of school. IT.WAS.CRAZY! At any rate, things did slow down and the level of support changed.
As the energy of the building shifted, I found myself asking…..now what? As I was determining the direction of my role, one thing continued to ring in my ear. My boss had said during one of our meetings to be visible, be visible, be visible. And so I listened. What I found was that being visible kept me VERY busy. :) I would hang out in pod areas and just wait for someone to pull me in: ”hey Michelle could you,” “wait I have a question,” “oh do you have a quick second,” “I am trying to,” “I can’t find this app,” “since you’re here,” “I swear..you always show up at the perfect time!”….I loved it! I loved helping the teachers and learning. The staff I am a part of was/is so eager to learn and share. It has been great to be a part of the excitement and journey. Feeding off of their energy, I would “make my rounds” encouraging teachers to try new things. We would learn from, and with, each other. We would also learn so much from the kids! #kidsareyourbestresource I felt the need to celebrate and reinforce everything that was happening. As a result I began weekly “shout outs” to recognize all of the “goodness” taking place. The shout outs started with me shouting out to the staff via email. It then turned into teachers shouting things out. I just couldn’t keep up with all of the amazing things happening. Here is an example of one of our Padlet shout outs. Padlet Teacher Shout Out https://padlet.com/auth/login show an example The shout outs not only positively reinforced efforts but also exposed others to new ideas. It was fun to celebrate what was evolving.