Supporting new teachers has been a passion of mine since I first stepped into a classroom a little over 12 years ago. Working in a specialty area like I do, the number of student teachers who pass through my department is rather low so I try to pull student teachers from other departments into my black hole of technology awesomeness whenever I can.
As CUEBC vice-president, supporting new teachers to incorporate technology in purposeful and critical ways is a strong mandate of ours and for these reasons, I couldn’t be more excited to present at this year’s BCTF New Teacher Conference in Richmond.
My 90 minute presentation will cover two key areas of value that I think all new teachers and TTOCS should be aware of.
- Developing a mobile technology portfolio of teaching resources. Ideally this portfolio would look like a teaching website. Sites building tools like Google Sites are ideal due to their integration with Google Drive (Google Docs, etc). This allows you to store and retrieve assignments, documents, surveys all without being tied down to a district technology framework. In a young teacher’s career where they may often be jumping from school to school and maybe even cross-district, there is tremendous value in going solo and maintaining your own independent portfolio. I will go into more detail and show you the in’s and out’s of exactly how to do this. Including maintaining your own custom domain name to make finding you online so much easier.
The second part of the session will focus on marketing yourself as a TTOC within a district. I seem to be seeing more of these mystical creatures I like to call the “Ghost TOCs”. They appear and then disappear without leaving a trace. I like the idea of looking at each TOC dispatch, not as a job for the day, but a job interview. I will share some tips and tricks to outline how to leave a lasting impression each time you get a TOC dispatch, how to make a name for yourself within a district, and how to keep teachers calling you back time and time again. I speak from experience as somebody who was laid off from the same job for 8 years straight but kept coming back!
Please access my Pro-D Resource Page for accompanying material and links from this session.
Please feel free to connect with me on Twitter and let’s keep this discussion going.
Jon Hamlin 