Adventures of a "Professional" Twitter

Sophomore year of college has been a strange year so far. I should have seen it coming really, it started off with an emergency room visit and subsequent appendix removal at two in the morning. Nevertheless, this year has been an adjustment. For perhaps the first year in my educational career, there is a shift in my education. Instead of learning for myself and for my own education, I am learning in order to teach others well. The effort I put in, learning I engage in, and work I complete, is no longer solely for my benefit. I find myself working in order to better myself and to prepare for the classroom environment I hope to create. Much of this transition is simply in the courses I have been taking, yet a surprisingly large part of it has been in connecting with other educators from around the world. Through my PLN, and specifically the Twitter account I have created, I have been able to connect with educators and administrators from around the globe in the ongoing discussion of education.

              Through Twitter I have been able to connect with my peers in new ways. We have been encouraged each other, discussed ideas with each other, and collaborated together. And in that way alone, this professional Twitter has been a helpful tool for me. There is something uplifting and encouraging about being able to relate to your peers on a platform that is so common. It is a way to extend an arm and encourage others, but also to reach back and be lifted up. In my own experiences in just these past few months I have observed the excitement and work that my fellow classmates are doing, as well as, cheered them on as we begin to progress through the educational program together.

              In addition to connection with peers, I have found a great joy in following and observing the interactions from my elementary schools, now, as a future educator. Seeing posts of the activities done in the classroom and then thinking about the activities I want to do in my classroom, with my students, has been such an exciting part of this time in my life, and a large part of it stems from this Twitter assignment. So far I have made connections with several of my past teachers, as well as several of the newer teachers in my old school district. There was one instance where I tweeted about a Professional Development event I was going to in Chicago and was filled with joy when my eighth-grade social studies teacher asked me to give her any tools to use in her classroom. In a time where it is very easy to feel stuck in the middle as an individual who is not quite a working adult, but not quite a young teenage student, having a platform where the professionals are often questioning how to encourage preservice teachers has truly made an impact on my life.

              In similarity with this, I joined a twitter chat where the discussion was technology in education and specifically PLNs. In that twitter chat, myself and several teachers and preservice teachers discussed Twitter and other platforms in which they are professionally engaged in. I learned new tools to get involved with and enjoyed reading of all the different ways teachers around the world work to stay connected to others and informed for their students. I also made a new teacher follower friend!

              When I take a step back from the assignment portion of this Twitter account, I find that I have been able to truly take in a lot of valuable information and give out questions, comments, and posts that help widen the conversation. At the end of the day, most of us have the same goal, we want to love our students (or future students), we want to learn more each day, and we want to connect with others like us. Social media platforms just so happen to be a way we achieve these goals today.