Connecting with Faraway Teachers Via Social Media
An Interview with Jill Y. Fletcher & Grace Hilsmier
Being an educator today means being inundated with mandatory professional development, new technology, and new online resources. But sometimes the best professional tools are the ones we’ve been using in our personal lives all along. Social media use for teachers has moved way beyond the beautiful bulletin boards on Pinterest, with thousands of educators flocking to Twitter, Facebook groups, and Instagram to share best practices, discuss professional texts, and to crowdsource solutions to common classroom problems. Data accessed in the least formal forum can often have the greatest impact on a teacher’s practice.
Recently, educators Grace Hilsmier (Indiana) and Jill Yamasawa Fletcher (Hawai’i) — more than 4,000 miles apart geographically, but virtually connected in just a keystroke — have used Twitter to grow their professional learning networks (PLNs). These two made acquaintance when Grace found the answers she had been seeking about English one-pagers in a blog post Hope Street Group Hawaii Teacher Fellow Jill wrote for NCTE. (Engaging with peers through social media, and sharing your expertise through the publication of blogs and op-eds, are both components of the Hope Street Group Teacher Fellow’s experience.) Continuing to collaborate online, Grace and Jill agreed to answer a few questions about how educators can use the power of social media to connect with and learn from each other.
How did you get started using social media as a professional development tool?
Grace: I had been hearing a lot about Twitter from EdCamps and other professional development workshops, but I found it so overwhelming the first few times I tried. It wasn’t until a friend of mine walked me through a Twitter chat that I really understood how valuable social media can be. I started out by following some people I’d seen speak in person and built my PLN from there. This is actually my first ever blog post, and it’s all thanks to connections I made on Twitter!
Jill: I joined Twitter after an ECET2 experience, and the organizers were holding a Twitter chat. I barely knew what I was doing, and I don’t think I even answered a single question, but I started following a superstar teacher and Twitter user in my district. From then on, I found Twitter (and Instagram) to be exceptional professional development tools. It’s also helped me to think of ways that I could add to the conversation beyond tweets like writing blogs for Edutopia and NCTE.
How have you used social media to connect with others?
Jill: I find Instagram and Twitter to be powerful connectors between my classroom and the world. I’ve connected with educators in Italy and with some only a few miles away. I like that I’m able to peek into what other schools are doing, and how other teachers are handling different obstacles. It’s refreshing to see different perspectives on complex problems from people around the world.
Using social media as a teacher, as a professional development tool, has connected me to amazing curriculum I didn’t know even existed, like anti-bias education and social justice. (I was familiar with the ideas from my liberal arts education, but not as a curriculum to teach in schools.) Several educators I find useful are: @blackgirlsteach, @rachel.cargle, @lilnativeboy, @theconsciouskid, and @teachandtransform.
My other reason for using social media as a teacher is to find like-minded educators who just make teaching look fun. There are a lot of them on Instagram, but my favorite is @schooledbystultz because she really goes above and beyond for her kids. The types of videos and posts she puts out there show the bond she has with her students. Hers is a classroom bubbling with joy. Her relationships with her students are so genuine. Seeing that helps me return to my why.
I’ve learned so much from schools and teachers who aren’t that far away from my school. Even though people often think of Twitter as connecting people who are far from you, I see a lot of potential to connect with people I wouldn’t normally know anything about within my own district. I think this builds relationships in a different way. It’s like, “hey, this is what we’re doing at our school — what are you doing over there? Oh, we like that idea, we’re going to try that, too.” It’s a great vibe to build within a district.
My district superintendent even told a group of teachers that he appreciates the Twitter usage because he’s able to see the highlights of what we’re doing in our schools in 30 minutes on his phone instead of taking a month to go and visit each of our classrooms. So a presence on social media can be viewed as something practical.
Grace: I can’t count how many times I’ve thanked my lucky stars that I am a teacher in the Internet age. To those of you out there who taught before Google, I salute you! Social media makes it so much easier to find what I need and ask others for help.
I am not on Instagram, but I use Facebook and Twitter regularly to find resources for my classroom. Communities like #NCTEvillage and the Passionate Readers Book Club on Facebook have been invaluable places to ask specific questions and get recommendations from teachers all over the world. As Jill said, I get to peek into other schools and classrooms and see things that aren’t even being considered in my district yet.
I think what I find most useful about Twitter, though, is how much I learn from other teachers just like me. So often, professional development comes from people outside the classroom, or people who teach in places radically different from my classroom, but on Twitter, I can follow other sixth grade teachers and benefit from all the little tricks and innovations they use each day.
My absolute favorite thing to do on Twitter, however, is participate in chats. Some that I particularly enjoy are #teachwrite, #teachpos, and #122edchat. They are a great way to connect with people outside your immediate circle and to get instant feedback on an idea, rather than waiting for others to stumble upon your feed. Teaching can be lonely work. No one is there to comfort you when a lesson bombs, and no one is there to see you triumph, but social media gives me a way to share both with people who will support me.
What would you say to teachers who are afraid to try social media, or don’t see it as a valuable learning tool?
Grace: I think that some fear of social media comes from a valid anxiety about protecting our information and the confidentiality of our students. I would encourage teachers who are nervous (and even those who aren’t) to make sure they are familiar with their district’s social media policies and to take their time getting started. When I first signed up for Twitter, I took my cues about what to post from friends who were already using it. If you don’t have friends on Twitter, follow the lead of a few educators you admire. Take things slow and only post what you are comfortable with. There’s nothing wrong with just following for a while and learning from others while limiting your own posts.
For educators who don’t see it as a valuable learning tool, I’d say you never know until you try! It took me several attempts to understand and use Twitter effectively. Stick with it, even if it doesn’t seem like your thing at first. It’s easy for social media to become overwhelming, so use it selectively. I keep my Twitter account for professional purposes only, and I am very particular about who I follow, so I know I am getting a high volume of useful information in my feed. If you clutter your feed with every author, friend, and random funny person, social media will take a lot of your time and give little back on any given day. But if you isolate your professional accounts from your personal ones, you will find yourself with more great ideas than you know what to do with.
Jill: I don’t think every teacher has to be on social media. It’s just one avenue that I have found works really well for me. It also serves as a form of transparency so parents can see what we’re doing in class, and things that I care about in education. I guess if someone was afraid to try it, I would say to start by lurking. See what other educators are doing. Also, don’t get caught up in the Instagram trap of trying to make things look beautiful in your classroom. If you’re a classroom teacher, you’re always doing an incredible job just staying in the profession and not leaving. You are enough. Don’t feel like you need to compare yourself to anyone else.
For someone who doesn’t think it’s a valuable learning tool, I would say that I’ve learned more from my fellow teachers on social media than most of the face to face stand and deliver professional development I’ve had in my 10 years of teaching. And the reason for this is because on social media there are links to other information and lots of time for you to go through the material on your own time. It’s at your own pace, and that’s what’s great about it. You can also ask questions and get other teachers in your PLN to weigh in with their opinions. Whether you’re for or against social media as a teacher, I think you cannot deny the power of it, and its impact on the teachers who use it.
Jill Yamasawa Fletcher is a poet, National Board Certified Teacher, and a 2018 Hope Street Group Hawaiʻi State Teacher Fellow who advocates for student and teacher empowerment. She has taught AVID, college and career readiness, middle schoolers for 6 years and was an ELA teacher for 4 years before that. Jill holds a BA in English from Santa Clara University, an MA in creative writing and a teaching credential from University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She serves on the board of Hawaiʻi AMLE and is the K-12 Hawaiʻi policy analyst for NCTE. She is currently serving as an interim assistant principal at Kapolei Middle School. Connect with her on Twitter @TeachinginHI.
Grace Hilsmier teaches sixth grade reading and language arts in Portage, Indiana, a large town near Chicago. She enjoys connecting students with books that are just right for them as individuals and focuses on fostering life-long reading and writing habits in her classes. She is pursuing National Board certification this year. Follow her via Twitter @GraceHilsmier.
