Using Social Media for Professional Development

Just quoting.....http://www.kidsdiscover.com/blog/teacherresources/social-media-for-teachers/

The 'ok plateau'

The author, Joshua Foer, originated the term 'ok plateau' in his popular science book, Moonwalking with Einstein, on the subject of improving memory. He used it to describe that common autopilot state when you have habitually mastered the basics of a task, but despite being skilled you stop really improving to reach expert status; you simply plateau in performance.

Teachers, among other professionals, are prone to this state. After our initial training and the first years of walking in and out our classes when we are eagerly engaged in grasping new knowledge and making successful connections, our improvement rate slows down. The evidence quoted by Rivkin, Hanushek and Kain (2005) shows that on the average teachers reach the ‘ok plateau’ stage after spending the first couple of years in teaching. From that stage and on teacher experience seems to have a negligible impact on student achievement.

I believe that every teacher goes through this feeling at some point in his career. Making a routine out of lessons, accepting the ‘norm’ that some students do not have the capacity to improve much, turning on the ‘autopilot’ as far as what we ] do and how we view our students takes us unaware.It seems, too, that the more self confident we become with the material we teach, the more complacent we get. We gradually stop reading about teaching and learning and if still attending seminars, workshops or any other form of coaching we do it with boredom or with lingering regularity. An example that was witnessed at the recent organized workshop by the relevant association in my country.

Sometimes reaching this stage seems inevitable. Part of the problem being the continuous pressure on teachers to take risks and experiment in adopting ‘new ways’ in which their confidence is lacking. This, and the workload with so many things to do in and out of class that are not directly related to what we teach aggravate the situation.

There are no quick fixes to the issue of genuine continuous teacher improvement. Taking part in a Comenius training program or making arrangements to set up a training course in your school unit when you will be given the opportunity to follow a more personalized coaching model where reflection and feedback is consistently done with time allocated to do this certainly helps in getting you back into track. Deliberate practice, which is the case here, involves focusing each time in smaller aspects of pedagogy and repeating that practice with lots of immediate feedback from a mentor. It is about a self-critical process of gradually facing a chain of challenges that lead you to the next level of development and awareness. It is the responsibility of the school administration and of the appointed head of department to make such arrangements but it is also the responsibility of the teacher to be committed to such time consuming and demanding practice.

There are many books written with the intention to support teachers and their coaching such as:

‘Practice perfect’ by Doug Lemov or ‘Talent is overrated’, by Geoff Golvin

Getting in touch with teacher communities being the local relevant associations or with some of the online communities that lie abundantly on the internet does help in our work. Last but not least, one must have realized that there are so many opportunities to join online courses nowadays. These are opportunities not to be missed.