Personal Learning Networks & Me

I have been a part of multiple PLN's without even knowing what this acronym stood for. Over the past year especially I have relied on these networks of people to help me through my second year teaching, switching to a hybrid teaching model, and developing my innovation plan. Without these networks, I can say with absolute certainty that I would not be where I am today.

From what I have said so far it may be very easy to say that I have taken a lot from these groups of people, if you made this assumption you would be very right. However, I have also contributed many things to these groups such as digital templates for hybrid learning, free digital notes for 6th-grade math, custom planning and portfolio binder templates, and the list could go on. This act of giving and taking is what I think a PLN is all about. Being involved in a PLN is not just being a member of a Facebook group and reading every post, to truly be a member you should be giving back to your network in some capacity even if it's only in a minor way.

I would never want to say that COVID-19 was a blessing, but in a way, for me, it was, at least in my career. I began teaching about two months before the pandemic began, after spring break in 2020 when all of us were sent home and told we would be teaching virtually for the rest of the year many teachers I worked with panicked. I was being thrown from my first classroom to a new digital world, but this digital world was not too different from my own experiences as a student. I think that these experiences as a virtual student really set me apart during this time and gave me an opportunity to give back to those I had been learning from. Now, my campus is still teaching some students virtually and I have been given more responsibility and trust by my administration and my colleagues.

Some of the specific PLN's I am involved in are:

The DFW Teachers Lounge on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/dfwteacherslounge/?multi_permalinks=3619380821507237

Common Sense Educators on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CommonSenseEducators

We Are Teachers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/WeAreTeachers

My ADL Cohort

and one blog I follow quite religiously is from Jennifer Findley: https://jenniferfindley.com/

One of the things I have learned from these groups or people and from these courses even more so is the importance of feedforward, not just feedback. By this, I mean that the critic that we give and receive should be in the context of pushing ourselves or others forward. Our job as educators and in PLN's is to grow others and help them reach for success not just to critic and say they are doing something wrong. When we focus more on critic for learning (feedforward) we are influencing a growth mindset, we are saying you may not be right... yet. This idea is a driving force in my own PLN's and how I try to lead my students and myself.