It is time to let our teacher-self BLOOM with our teacher gamification challenge! Collect as many petals as you can to help your flowers bloom.

How can you grow some petals? Complete a challenge below and share your evidence on Twitter using #tiebreakerEDU @gibboneyrebecca. You can post up to 8 petals a day; however, you can only post one of each petal each day. For example, you cannot post connecting with students two times in one day. What does evidence look like? Snap a picture (blur out student faces if you do not have permission) or tweet a reflection! We will practice integrity – I trust you are being honest with me!

• Connect with your students virtually
• Connect with your colleagues virtually
• Get out and exercise
• Connect on Twitter with your PLN
• Try a new skill and share it
• Try a new tool during remote learning instruction
• Share something for the #tiebreakerEDU community on Twitter
• Share what you are thankful for during these times

10 free resources. 50 free resources. 100 free resources.

The list keeps g r o w i n g.

The more it keeps growing, the less I can breath. Is it a panic attack? Surely, not. I mean I’m working from home in my pajamas, how panicked could I be?

Remote learning. Social distancing. Zoom. Google hangouts.

Sweaty palms. Yes, I believe I’m having a minor panic attack.

Breathe.

B r e a t h e.

Educators around the world are working 24:7 (plus more) to figure out how to best reach students. Academically? Yes. Moreover, emotionally. Educators, you are doing great…really!

Education community, all of these resources are fantastic! I love seeing our education community come together. It’s just all so … NEW and that ‘newness’ can be overwhelming sometimes. It is like when I got my iPad for teaching for the first time. I downloaded every cool app I could find. For what? Those apps just took up my storage, and I maybe used 5 apps for instruction.

So, if you find yourself panicking like myself, pull yourself back and breathe and use these helpful tips that I have used to process these resources.

1. Think about your style of teaching style. Just because you are practicing remote learning, it doesn’t mean you need to lose how you teach. Does the resource support your teaching style? If so, dig a little deeper!
2. Does this resource enhance your content? A big fear right now is that teachers might lose content because instruction is not face-to-face. This is not the case! We must instruct intentionally. Please do not just give your students a website because it seems ‘cool’. If you are going to provide students with a resource, there needs to be a purpose that is tied to your content.
3. How new is the technology for your students (and the parents)? If the technology tool is too new, this is not the time to introduce it. Keep with the familiar for your students. Remember, this is just as new for most students.

When we first started in the digital age, we practiced SAMR to enhance and transform student learning. Now, I cannot help but refer back to TPACK to help shape instruction remotely. I have also found these questions helpful to balance the endless resource list and slow down the panic.

Will we be overwhelmed? Sure. Yet, it is important to remember that, as educators, we can only control what we can control. Not to mention, you are doing great. Really, you are! Just take one thing at a time…We’re in this together!

When I was younger, one of my favorite activities was catching lightning bugs. No matter how hot and no matter how late, my brother and I would always catch them in a jar and keep them in our bedrooms as our ‘night light’ until morning. Hoping and praying that the lightning bug would make it to through the light, it never did.

Fast forward twenty years and I can’t help but enjoy watching the night sky light up by these flickering childhood memories. Are they the prettiest pets, no. Are they the most reliable, no. Yet, they always bring joy and a smile when their spark, their light.

Their light shines until someone (innocently guilty) captures them, quickly extinguishing the little light they have.

As educators you hold light within, a spark deep inside, that brings joy and smiles to many. Like lightning bugs, that light goes through seasons, at times brighter than others. Yet, it is always there. That light is there to make a colleague smile behind tired eyes. It’s there to light a path on a lost child’s journey. It’s there to flicker joy in a classful of students who feel captured by textbooks and state exams.

You have a unique flicker in your eyes, in your smile, in your heart that is only yours. While some days may be brighter than others, I pray that you never lose that flicker. It can be hard. You want to be that ‘night light’, but it is also important to spread your wings and fly. Fly beside those that make you shine brighter; never flying close to those that fly you into darkness.

Like everything else in life, you have a choice to get wrapped up, captured, in the darkness. Avoid the jar of fate. Shine in your own way; no one says you need to conform to the norm. You only have so long to shine.

So, my little lightning bugs, shine to new heights and let your light flicker in the darkness.