Further to my recent post I thought it fair that I write about my #teachinghighlight. Since we first started talking about it on Twitter earlier in the week I have been thinking long and hard about my highlight. There are some fantastic tales out there about the lovely moments in your career such as this one and this one from @cherrylkd. I’m not quite sure I can equal these – I have some lovely memories of things that have happened in my career. Many of those have involved students and some of them have involved the experiences I’ve had working with colleagues or through things I’ve been involved with outside of the normal teaching day, such as TeachMeet Clevedon.
The highlight I’ve chosen to write about was the moment relates to a moment in my career from a few years ago. The highlight isn’t one specific moment but something that happened over a period of time. Back a number of years ago I started running Digital Leaders at my school. It started really small. I trialled it with a few students to start with and built it up over time. One thing I was always keen to promote with the group that it really wasn’t a ‘geek squad’ kind of thing. That students could choose their responsibilities in relation to their interests. If they were good at organising they could coordinate the genius bar rosters or the staff support schedule with their technology related CPD. If they liked social media then they could get involved in blogging and the YouTube channel. You get the idea. One thing that I made consistent though was that all of them had to involve themselves with interactions with others. That they needed to develop their social skills. Their ability to think on their feet, be professional, courteous, supportive, helpful; all the things that I thought a good Digital Leader should be.
One student in the group was also a student in my teaching lessons. He would avoid getting involved in group work. He would not like it when asked questions in the classroom. He was introverted. He was a student with some SEND although wasn’t a statemented student. In his work through Digital Leaders however, he developed confidence. He organised events as part of a team. He was instrumental in feeding in to the organisation and running of our TeachMeet. He met attendees as they arrived. Spoke with adults with confidence. He grew exponentially as part of the experience of being a Digital Leader.
So how is this a highlight? Well – it goes really to the power of saying thank you; which is what he did when I left. He gave me a lovely card. The card had not only a lovely message from him but from his family too. He thanked me to my face too in the days before the end of term. Something, I firmly believe wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been for the opportunities to develop and grow that he gained by involving himself with Digital Leaders.
If you’d like to learn more about Digital Leaders, you might like to visit http://digitalleadernetwork.co.uk or I have a free book I wrote about starting Digital Leaders and some other related info on the iBooks store.
Thanks for reading.
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