Shownotes
Digital Learning Tip of the Week
Tip # Take the first few weeks of the school year to get to know those woking with you and around you. To get our weekly Instructional Coaching Tips sent right to your inbox, please subscribe to our weekly newsletter.In This Episode …
- Things to think about when planning lessons and classroom activities
- How to approach your administrator when you need support or buy-in (new tech tool, curriculum idea, book choice.
- How to consider end-of-year evaluations, especially for new teachers, and what to do with a good or average evaluation.
- The importance of teacher engagement in meetings and how to “show up” the right way to make a positive relationship with administration
- How to support colleagues and get on the same page with colleagues, especially if they don’t share the same vision of teaching as you
- How to be a leader by example for colleagues and students
- Things to think about when working with students who are not used to your teaching style
- How can I use the lesson to build a rapport with my students?
- Things to think about when trying new Digital Learning tools
- Is the application I’m looking to use approved by the school district?
- Does the application align with my districts goals and digital learning plan?
- Do my students need to log into the application? If so, do they need to have a privacy policy set up?
- Things to think about when you are getting used to new classroom neighbors and coworkers across the district
- Audio Concerns - Does the lesson and sound from my room bleed over into the hallways and into other classrooms?
- Is my teaching style complimentary to those teaching around me?
- Do I have similar classroom expectations as other teachers?
Conversation Takeaways
- Building professional relationships with teachers, students, and administrators is crucial in education.
- Creating a comfortable and engaging atmosphere in the classroom can include playing music and assigning seats.
- Introducing new technologies and tools should be done in a thoughtful and approved manner.
- Offering support and building relationships with colleagues, especially new teachers, is important.
- Building strong relationships in the education community is essential for success.
Chapters
- 00:00 Introduction and Welcome
- 03:05 The Importance of Building Professional Relationships
- 09:13 Tips for Planning Lessons and Activities
- 13:24 Incorporating Digital Tools in the Classroom
- 19:57 Working Effectively with Colleagues
- 28:36 Supporting and Mentoring New Teachers
- 33:05 Creating a Positive Learning Environment through Relationships
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- Diane Manser | www.teachingisemotional.com
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Transcripts
Hello everybody and welcome to the TeacherCast education network. name is Jeff Bradbury. Thank you so much for joining us today and making TeacherCast your home for professional development. This is Digital Learning Today episode number 36. Today we're going to be talking all about building professional relationships with those teachers around you, the students who you have in front of you, and of course your administrators. With me as always is my co -host Miss Diane Manser. Diane, how are you today? Welcome back to the program.
Diane Manser (:Thank you so much, Jeff. I'm doing great. Having a great final day of summer, living it up, squeezing all the last drops out of summer. How are you today?
Jeffrey Bradbury (:I am feeling that same way. I just got today the email from the superintendent saying, you know, I wanted to hold this off as much as possible. But here we are. And so I'm looking forward to being back. We've got three days coming up this week, then the long extended weekend and then kids start on Tuesday. And so there are that's that's making us think about this topic here building those relationships. I'm looking forward to new teachers around me. I'm looking forward to
At least one new administrator I know in our technology department. It's a three person team and we have a new person coming in which is going to be an amazing opportunity here. you know new things, new approaches. What are you looking forward to?
Diane Manser (:all those same things. My favorite part of the early part of the school year is getting back together all that high energy.
You got the kids who are excited, maybe a little nervous, but there's just so much like hope, anticipation for the school year. And that's coming from the teachers, from the admin, from the students, even our opening convocations. Do you feel this way too, Jeff, where it's just a lot of like welcome messages and a lot of enthusiasm, people excited about catching up. And I love that energy and I wish we could somehow bottle it up and then bring that same energy mid -year when we're feeling the tiredness of the school year.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:I agree that energy always stops for me the moment that the kids walk in the room and they're like, Okay, here we are. And I'm going No, here we are.
Diane Manser (:That's the reality, right?
Jeffrey Bradbury (:You know, here we are. And especially like I haven't started a school year as a teacher since 2019. And so there's a bit you know, there's a lot of things that have been going on. So honestly, I haven't thought much about the school year. I've been my best, know, done the best dad self done the best podcast yourself all those different things. Haven't thought about it. So I know that when we get back on Tuesday, sorry, we get back on Wednesday.
Diane Manser (:Here we are.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:don't rush that Wednesday and Thursday of this week. You know, all those meetings that we're going to be in, I'm going to be heads down into my notion dashboards, building out the curriculum trying to put together those lessons. I keep seeing everybody on Facebook talking about cleaning up Google Classroom. I'm going to wait until the first day. And just you know, summertime is only here once a year. That's kind of where I am. you know, today we are looking all about those
relationships. You know, we talked about it on our coaching show Ask the Tech Coach, which you can find it over on AsktheTechCoach .com. But building relationships are important. And that leads us to our digital learning tip of the week. Diane, what is our digital learning tip of the week?
Diane Manser (:Alright, this week we're talking about how we can maintain those positive relationships with our administration, our
colleagues, our students, and I also want to add in there to ourselves. You know, we are important in that conversation as well. And as teachers, oftentimes we're high achievers, we're givers, and sometimes we can forget to remember treating ourselves well in that whole process. So I think it's relationship through and through, relationship from self all the way outward, everything you experience in our classroom day.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:So let's break this topic down a little bit. The first thing that we want to kind of hit is, you know, things to think about when we're planning our lessons and activities. And I'm very aware of the fact that even though I've been in my district last year, I've only been in the district for about 18 weeks, really. And so I know that those first couple days that people are going to be coming in my classroom, how you doing, what's new. I mean, I'm still the new guy in all of this. And like I mentioned, I have a new
assistant principal that I'm going to be looking forward to working with. Obviously, there's going to be a lot of trust building. But what are some of the things that you look out for when you're creating those first couple lessons, those first kind of get to know you things, you know, preparing for the first time when your administrator kind of creeps in your that you know, the door to kind of see what's going on. How do you start to manage those first couple days worth of activities?
Diane Manser (:Absolutely. So for myself, I'm entering my 19th year.
teaching high school English and I try my best to make the atmosphere as comfortable as possible. So for me, that equates to not having the students do too much that's individual or solo centered, but more so like groups, student activities, cooperative activities, partner work, just to kind of continue breaking the ice. I would love to know your opinion on this or even some of our listeners too, if they want to write in, but I like to have music playing. for
For me, it's it's fun music, it's upbeat music. So when the students are walking into the classroom, it kind of takes that edge off. You have that background noise or some distraction. It kind of allows the students to be able just to sort of like warm up into the space. They don't feel so exposed. That's really important to me. Assigned seats are important to me. I just do alphabetical order. That gives a student a place to go. They're not choosing it. We don't have to worry about friendships, peer situations, conflicts.
drama, nothing. It's like this is your seat, it's assigned, and let's get into some groups that are assigned randomly or whatever. Let's get into some partner work. And I have a couple activities I can share as well, but I'd love to know from you too, Jeff, how do you arrange your classroom to make those students come in and feel comfortable?
Jeffrey Bradbury (:have a fantastic teaching space. But I will also go on the record and say I have a horrible looking classroom my classroom as is a it's a u shape actually because I've got desks on the sides of the two walls.
And then I've got this middle section that pops out. So I can't do rows, I can't do everything. And for me, it works out because the kids can come in, bring their laptops in, and then they can plug in. So it gives you more surface space. There's basically like, you like, you know, a desk all the way around, it's like one big continuous island is if you will, like, so it works in one space, but I'm constantly as a teacher, going up and around and up and around and up and around. like,
It's an interesting space to be in. There's not a lot of group work that can be done without having people move all around. I do agree. And I want to hit this one at the end of the at end of the conversation today. I do like to play music. But being middle school, you know, they walk in and they kind of look at you like you're funny. And I'm going no, no, like, dude, this looks this is the Jersey boy. We're listening to Bon Jovi, like, deal with it, right?
Diane Manser (:Some Bruce? You got some Bruce in there?
Jeffrey Bradbury (:you gotta do the bruise on jovi. But when that kind of died down last year, I just started playing a bunch of Disney tunes. And I thought that was gonna be fun. Again, middle school, right. But at the same time, you had people like, okay, we can do in Kanto here. okay, we can do this we can do so you kind of realize that there's some pockets of Disney niss. But again, what do you play there's even when you're new?
I don't want to play random playlists. It could be dangerous, right? Even even though it's innocent stuff. And of course, they listen to things that far worse than air supply. It's just like, you don't know where these things are. So, you know, I try to make it fun. I try to make it light whenever people are coming in. I always have like that slide up on the wall that says what we're going to work on today. But in honesty, it's middle school. You know, you got to do some of that stuff because you got to do some of that stuff. And, you know,
Diane Manser (:Yeah, that can be dangerous. Even if you're like, you're like clean.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:It's middle school. What? I don't know how else to put it. It's middle school.
Diane Manser (:Yeah, and you're also cutting through some of those social tensions too. Like it just really takes one student to give permission to like the Disney songs, for example. And the next thing you know, you have like five, six, seven students who are like, I like this too. And then you have a much more relaxed atmosphere. That can also turn on you. You could have, you know, a student not give that permission slip. And now all of a sudden something that you thought was going to be fun, engaging, just a little bit more relaxed now is stiff and uncomfortable and tense. And you're like, well, how did that come in?
that way. Yeah, I think that's why walking into the school year, you know, we hear this so often so many for so many school years that the relationship building is so important because it, you know, it establishes the trust. You already mentioned that word that's so important for ourselves, for our students. It also gives us an opportunity to survey the scene a little bit. Like how are students reacting to these expectations to each other? What am I noticing? It gives us a chance to kind of observe and then
and sort of take those internal notes that are gonna serve us as we continue in our classrooms. Like can these students work together? What is the noise level? That's gonna vary teacher to teacher. Some teachers need a little bit more quiet, a little bit more restricted. Other teachers don't mind a little bit more noise and chaos in their rooms at learning chaos. So I think it also gives an opportunity for that too.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:I noticed that a lot last year, you know, I had five classes per day was an AB schedule. So I had 10 total. And yeah, I don't want to say the names that I gave them. But you know, every class period had their own nickname. Right? This is the class that likes to do this. This is the class that likes to do that. And that was very apparent at the beginning. Again, I was the new guy walking into here. I'm curious to see how things are starting.
Diane Manser (:Mm -hmm.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:next week. But we'll see what happens with everything. And I know I'm looking forward to doing some of these off the wall lessons and stuff like that. You know, I think when it comes down to creating these lessons, it really boils down to how are you creating the expectations from day one? You know, we had talked in our last episode that I'm looking to do like passion projects, and I'm still trying to figure out all of that.
But that's not something that I want to I want to throw at them in the middle of October, like on day one, it's now part of this course is to do this. This is this is it's not like, I just I had this idea. It's no by the end of the the the semester, you will be creating this you will be doing this. This is the way that this is and just having those expectations from day one and I have no problem on day one going. This is the course. If you don't like it.
there's your counselor, right? I have no problem because I always try to weed out the expectations first and go look, if you don't want this, I don't want to say I told you so a month later. And if I'm not for you, let's let's not do this to each other. I don't know if that's the right way of looking at this. But you know, making sure that we're all on the same page of no, you're going to make a website, you're gonna make a podcast, you're good. This is not come in and play video games in tech class. Like this is not
how things are gonna work here.
Diane Manser (:Yeah, or like kind of repeating some of the same skills they already know.
that approach. know, and I think there's a time and place for all these things and philosophies, but sometimes, especially as our students are in middle school, it's really important for us as teachers to challenge them and to push them into a different kind of comfort zone or outside of a comfort zone. And to say, you know, especially if a student's like, well, I never did a podcast or like, are you going to listen to it or like, is everyone going to listen to it? And I don't know what your choice in that is. Or even for myself being an English teacher, we do public speaking, you know, we do stand
up in the classroom and speak and sometimes with a group or a partner and sometimes it's on your own and you know those are important skills to have and I agree that like you know we don't jump into that on the first day and then have a student come into our room and say I don't know if I really trusted in here or like it in here I felt kind of exposed or like I don't I don't feel good I'm nervous about tomorrow like we ease into these things we build the confidence and we build that rapport but at the same time to say as teachers we're only going to
to what's comfortable and easy for you. I think that's remiss from our jobs as teachers and also what the students should expect of themselves as students too. So I think that's great, know, being able to share with them like this is the course and we're gonna do really cool things in here and I hope that you'll stay. But nonetheless, we're doing cool things in here. I love that.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:I say this more often than I should. But we as teachers have 13 years to prepare them to answer one question. And that's the only job that we have. It doesn't matter if you're in my position, if you're in your position or any, we have 13 years to get them to answer the question, tell me about yourself. And if we can't do that, what are we doing? And this is just my philosophy on life, you're helping somebody get a job.
through high school English. I'm helping somebody get a job through middle school technology, somebody else is doing it through science class. But we're all trying to give them those skills to stand up and say, Hi, this is who I am. I just happen to be the one building the curriculum out that's going to ask them to physically do that you're doing it through book reports and through our presentations and stuff like that, right. So there's a whole bunch of stuff. But really, when it comes down to it, we have one goal, which is
pass them on to that next round, whether it be a college interview, a job interview, whatever it happens to be. This is what we're dealing with. And I'm very, very open with my kids. I tell them that from day one. My role here is to prepare you for whatever that next hurdle is, I'm going to tell you what that next hurdle is. And I'm going to tell you the why the next hurdle is. And if you're not interested, there's the door. Like it's just
that easy. So I think there's a lot of things that we can start to think about when building relationships. Of course, we'd love to hear what you think about that. Please feel free to reach out to us over at teachercast .net slash contact would love to have you guys be part of our teacher cast communities, we start to build out this podcast and start to build out our teacher cast network. So we talked a little bit about ways to plan out our lessons classroom activities. Let's talk a little bit about digital tools. Right? Because this is a biggie.
Most of us have been looking over the summertime at what's new, what's great, what's interesting. Maybe you've been to an ed camp or an SD or a conference and you're seeing these new things come up or you're on social media and you see something. And of course, I want to go try that I want to go share that. But the question I have right now, Diane is, should you? Are there things that we should be thinking about before we just open up the brand new and introduce them to our students?
Jeffrey Bradbury (:What's your opinion on new technologies that we find, new skills that we're learning? How do you handle that specifically? Because as an English teacher, I imagine there's other people in your building that teach the same curriculum.
Diane Manser (:absolutely. Yes. I mean, there's a whole department. Plus I have a whole team of teachers who are just in ninth grade with me. So my take on that is to always go back to the clarity piece, to always go back to that end result. I'm a big planner with that backward design. So what is my end goal here? And sometimes, you know, the end goal is I want to give you exposure to this technology or I want to give you exposure to like, you know, last episode we talked about Canva. So if
if we're talking about that or we're talking about Google Slides or PowerPoint, just throwing out a couple of examples here. But I want to give you exposure to that and then we're going to build something that relates to what we've been doing in class. But overall, I want to teach you how to use this. I am more leery when it comes to just using it, just to use it. Because for myself, I'm always like, what's the time cost in the classroom? What do I want my students to get out of this? If it's going to be like enhanced critical thinking skills, is that tool giving that to me?
So for me, before I deliver something to my students in my class, I always try it out first. And then I see like, what is this going to give me? And is this going to produce for me what I need in terms of their skill growth? Is it applicable to what we're learning and doing in class? And is it going to be functional, maybe even fun, higher engagement? And if it checks all those boxes, I'm like, all right, guys, I just heard about this over the summer. I've tried it out or I kind of watched some video
tutorials and now we're going to do it and I feel more purposeful then as opposed to just rolling it out.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:think there's a difference for us, especially now, you know, are we out there trying a new feature of an application that we already use? For instance, you mentioned Canva, they've got a lot of neat stuff out there. Google Classroom's got a lot of neat stuff out there. I mean, that's, that's, you know, building upon a skill using an application that we already know. The flip side of that is, hey, there's this new digital tchotchke out there, I want to use it.
So let's talk a little bit about some of the things that we can do to make sure that we're doing the right thing, not only for our students, but also for ourselves. And I think one of those things is making sure that any tool that we're using in our classroom is approved by our school district. The last thing that we want is to have somebody call us into the office and say, so and so's mom question this.
What are you using? Why are you using it? How are you using it? Or I noticed that you're using B, but we've already been paying for a which does the same thing. Why are we now introduced? I've had to do that conversation from an administrator point of view. I've seen that conversation from a coach's point of view. And I've had to be in the middle of all of that stuff over the last many years. You want to always make sure that anything new that you're bringing in is of course approved in some way by the district.
If it's something where a student is logging in, you absolutely want to make sure that there's privacy agreement set up or that there's permissions or if there's rostering that needs to happen. All of those things. I mean, the last thing that a a tech director or director of digital learning wants to see is that there's 75 rogue applications or platforms that are out there being used that you have no idea about and there's privacy issues involved. What's your thoughts on that?
Diane Manser (:I agree completely and I think...
especially for our listeners who are newer teachers and you you figure when you're starting when you're new you're just so excited and you just want to be like trying all the new things and getting your students engaged and you may think like well you know I didn't mean to cause this issue I was just trying to do this and I think that's you know it's understandable but absolutely you know we have to make sure that we're checking with our tech directors or perhaps our technology coaches instructional coaches perhaps our
mentor teacher, maybe it's the colleague or it's the assistant principal, that person to say I want to try this new thing, what do I do to go about ensuring that I'm protecting myself and my students and that I'm still on the same page curriculum wise to our shared goals? And I think that's the first conversation that we should be having before we just jump in and start.
creating passwords and getting students logged in and then doing something even if the program seems innocent or it's a fun math game or something like that. So I completely agree with you, Jeff.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:I know over the last couple of days, I've been looking at, you know, how can I start to introduce this AI concept to students? Obviously, one of the first things I'm going to do is once I get to school next week, is to have those conversations. You know, do we have an AI policy? What is it? How can I introduce right? Did we did we over the summertime choose an AI app, whether it be Gemini or copilot or magic school or something like that, right? Because
These are skills that we need to be working towards. But obviously, I don't want to be going into something that the district has already, you know, in the main office, chosen that they didn't want to have. So what are those things available? And every school district should have some kind of a list of approved websites, approved applications, things that you should and shouldn't do. So making sure that all of that stuff is good. I also agree that any app any
lesson plan project at you know, especially in the first month, these should all be rapport building applications. I think last week we talked about you know, doing a lesson where I'm asking kids to make a business card asking kids to make an online signature. Yes, these are great digital learning lessons. But these are ways that I'm going to be kind of stepping back breathing a little bit at the beginning of the school year, but really seeing okay, who are the personalities in here?
you know, for instance, I might ask them to make a business card, but depending on the class, I might not ask them to send it to somebody all depends on the personalities and what the what the class ultimately ends up gelling like, right. And even for yourself, I mean, there's nothing that says in the first couple weeks, you can't make a business card based on the characters of a book, right?
It's all these different skills. It's just a matter of how are you going to be introducing it? But I certainly believe that anything that happened to the beginning of the year has to be, you know, relationship building or poor building, just getting to know the students just to see if they can take direction just to see how they're going to respond to you to see if they're going to follow the directions on time. What are you thinking about these first couple days? Has there been anything that you've been thinking about? Like, all right, I need to punt at least in the first couple of days just to kind of get my breath under me.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:What are you thinking?
Diane Manser (:Yeah, yeah, I love how you keep going, Wednesday. So I'm thinking the same thing. So I appreciate you putting that out there. Those first.
a couple of in -service days that we go into are so overwhelming. we just kind of go from all these different meetings and meanwhile our minds are in our classroom spaces and all that we have to do. For me, it really helps when I outline like what are my September goals? Because I'm on semester, so I have a class that runs from September 3rd to about January 31st. By the time I get to January 26th,
and we're heading into final exams, I needed to have covered so much material. So I want to build students confidence. I want to build their trust in my classroom and of myself too. I also got to keep that curriculum moving. You know, I got to get into that first book. I have to get into that first paper. We have to get into those first writing skill lessons, vocabulary, and then build our way to that first presentation. So for me, it's like outlining that first two weeks to say, by the time I get to the end of Friday, I want to make sure I've introduced this.
So it kind of helps me to stay on track that way, especially with everything else being a bit chaotic and high energy around me. It just helps me to focus in on when I'm in that classroom with my students and I'm teaching, where am I going and how fast am I going so I can make sure I'm hitting my end goals by that first quarter mark, second quarter mark, et cetera.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:You know, Diane, I am glad that you're here taking this ride with me as my co host, because you know, yes, we both teach semester courses, and I have to keep reminding myself, you're doing this with a team. If I don't get to the end of the book, let's just say, okay, because there is no end of the book for me. It's just okay, here's the here's the last day of the semester, we're going to wrap it up. And we'll start again next year. But for you, I know that there is that okay, I need to be on task with other
Diane Manser (:Mm -hmm. Yeah.
Diane Manser (:Mm
Jeffrey Bradbury (:ninth grade teachers, I need to be on task with wherever the final exam is that the district has provided for me. So I'm looking forward to going through this podcast with you over the next couple weeks. And of course, if you guys are out there, please don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button. We would love to have you guys be not only you know,
listeners and subscribers, but we also are taking all of these digital learning tips in every single one of these shows. And we're going to be building out our newsletters for it. Head on over to teachercast .net forward slash newsletter and join our teacher cast community. There's a lot of great things that we're starting to plan. And you're going to be looking forward to joining us with them over the next couple weeks. Now, Dan, we talked a little bit about, planning out those classrooms and activities. We talked about building out the lessons, talked about the digital learning tools. Let's talk about the last thing here when it comes to these beginning of the year relationships.
And that's understanding how to go and work with the people who are around you. And for me, that was difficult last year. You know, again, I walked into the school building in the middle of the year, who was I? I'm kind of teach different, you know, got this whole isty kind of thing going where I knew that that was a little bit faster than most people. And yeah, I'm the guy that suddenly is playing Bon Jovi in the hallways and singing show tunes to get the kids away from the bathrooms and
I was kind of the weird person, but you still have to realize that there's people on the sides of your classrooms as people across the hallways that why is Bon Jovi suddenly playing in my classroom? It's because the noise bleeds through. What are some of the things that we should be thinking about when building relationships with that core group of teachers who are around our classrooms, but you know, they're not necessarily in our departments, but
we still live with them, we still go down and say hi to them, still, you know, hey, how's your family kind of things? What are some of the advices that you have for building relationships with those teachers that are close by?
Diane Manser (:Absolutely, I think as teachers we tend to be intuitive with people's personalities and even their needs so I You already said it what I was going to say. It's those check -ins It's those like kind of coming out of your classroom space whether it's standing in the hallway or knocking on that teacher's door who's next to you across the hallway and saying hello and Asking a question about them and then engage in that conversation. I think that also allows the opportunity
to say, hey, I had to let you know that I like it high energy in here. I like to play some music, but the last thing I want to do is bother your classroom space because you mean a lot to me. When we think about ourselves as teachers and our students, so much of that is a turnover. You you have students for a semester, for a school year. You could have those colleagues for 30 years, for 20 years. You know, some teachers stay in this profession for decades. And I think it's important to set up a cooperative relationship
from the very beginning, a reciprocal relationship, and also to recognize too that not everyone is going to be the way that you are as a teacher.
And that's okay. Doesn't mean that it can't be professional. Doesn't mean that it can't be friendly in its way, even if it's not necessarily like, that's how I would run my space. That's how I would run that lesson. That's how I treat my students. Sometimes we have to just say that works for that person and the students are getting something from there that's valuable. And in my space, this is how I work things. But I think when we do those check -ins, it also allows some extended conversation of, love your feedback. You all right over here that I'm playing some, some jovie. I'm kind of rocking out for a few minutes.
class starts. don't want to bother you, but I like it. I appreciate it. hope I, you know, if you ever need anything from me, just let me know. So I think keeping that open dialogue is really important, but I love your high energy singing so tunes. I mean that, that would be Jeff. What a joy. I want to be next to your classroom like right now. Merge schools.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:love, you know, like my classroom is right across from the bathrooms. And so I have no problem just going up to a bunch of kids who are not where they should be and just are belting out Oklahoma tunes. And, you know, if they look at your funny, good, go to class, right? Like you shouldn't be standing here. But I mean, there's people who are around you. Those are the ones that are hopefully gonna have your back, right?
Diane Manser (:Hahaha
Diane Manser (:Yep.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:you know, there's the ones that you can pop it and go, look, I got to go into the restroom, or hey, I'm having an issue or hey, can you can you just watch my kid like, you know, they're the ones that are going to be around you building that foundation. That's your inner circle of your inner circles here. And so making sure that you're keeping up with them is really important. And for me, that's where my coaching background comes in. It's like, look, I'm not here to talk business.
how was your summer? How's your family? How's your week? And what are you doing? What's the new like, just trying to keep up with that stuff. So that way when it does come time to, hey, I have a question, you know, and and for me with my coaching background, again, I loved it last semester when teachers started to come to me not as a coach, but just, how do you do this in Google Classroom? And mean, I got a lot more business sometimes, not as a not as a direct coach, but just as a colleague last year than I ever did.
sometimes when I was a instructional coach. just making those professional relationships is important. Also, knowing that your teaching style is different than other teaching styles is extremely important. I mean, I know kids come into my class and they're either, okay, let's do this or this is different.
you know, they might have been sitting in a math class where they're, know, in rows and it's one what what what the whole time and then they come into you and you're rocking out to whatever right like, you got to make sure that somewhere in here you're jelling with things or else you're going to be Trust me on this, you're going to be that one that's just out there and everybody else is moving and moving on the you know, in the current
Diane Manser (:think it's really important to stay authentic to who you are and...
how you want to show up in your classroom space. Sometimes we can be the teacher that absolutely loves teaching and we love those students and we just kind of walk into those classroom spaces like I'm just, I'm so happy I get to do this. And we could be directly across the hallway from a teacher who maybe is over teaching, you know, they just can't, they can't find it. You know, they're in kind of a rut. I think it's important to nurture that understanding.
that, be compassionate to it, but then also say, my authentic self is to show up this way. And that's, that's important too. I want to add one more thing in this conversation. It's so important and dear to me. If we have any listeners out there who are perhaps a little bit more experienced to have that third year coming in or more, and they are near a first year teacher to try to just take care of that teacher, check in with them a little bit more.
offer some advice, share some of those pain points in teaching. Like sometimes we can crawl our way to a Friday and I can feel that way going into my 19th year or I can sit in that first week of in -service and be like, I can't believe we're back. What happened this summer? And then if a new teacher is feeling so overwhelmed just to be able to give that nurturing that validation to them. So for me, I always seek those people out those year ones, year twos and say,
How are you? What do you need? You want help with the copy machines? You want help with your canvas page? Do you need help with your website? What do you need? Or do you need nothing? Well, I'm a friend down the hall, and I'm here if you need me. And I think reaching out to those people is so important. So I'd love to encourage all of us to do that.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:that is what we're here for each and every week Diana are going to be throwing down this podcast every single Wednesday morning. So don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button. You can find us on Apple podcasts and Spotify and all of our teacher cast shows are going to be found over at teacher cast .net forward slash podcast. We are digital learning today your
home for professional development. And you know what, if you guys would like to be a guest to share anything that you're doing, featuring our favorite applications, digital learning tools, lesson plans, we would love to have you guys reach out to us go over to teacher cast .net today and hit teacher cast .net forward slash contact, we would love to have you guys be featured on the show. Diane, you know, let's just take that one last breath because the next time you and I record it'll already be in the in the thick of things.
Diane Manser (:I need another one. One more please. That's a little shaky.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:One more here. I know we can do this. I'm looking forward to it.
Diane Manser (:yeah, we got it. as soon as we get going, baby, we got it. We're gonna do that thing. It's just the starting can sometimes be a little hard, but you got it I got it too. So to all of our listeners, they got it.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:We we can do this. We can do this. We have each other. And of course, we have you guys out there. Thank you guys so much for visiting. Diane, one last time. Where can we learn more about the great things that you guys are doing in your classrooms?
Diane Manser (:Thanks so much. Please check it out. So I'm at teachingisemotional .com. You can also find me on all things social, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, private group at teachingisemotional. And my goal is to share that we are in a content profession and we are also in an emotional profession. And we have to understand ourselves in that regard and take care of our emotions within a challenging profession. Thanks, Jeff.
Jeffrey Bradbury (:Thanks a lot, Diane. And don't forget to head on over and
Jeffrey Bradbury (:Thanks, Diane. that's right. That was about that. My goodness. One one edit. Thanks a lot, Diane. And that wraps up this episode of Digital Learning today. Episode number thirty six on behalf of Diane and everybody here on TeacherCast. My name is Jeff Bradbury, reminding you guys to keep up the great work in your classrooms and continue sharing your passions with your students.
