Today for a brief second, I allowed myself to succumb to a few realities of my world…ones that would not have been so obvious had it not been for a few key events that occurred this year. For a moment, I allowed myself to feel pain, disgust and neglect. For a moment, I enveloped myself within my own private pity party. Then I sat down and read two very real postings by two brilliant women that I admire greatly. 1. We are Society, by Sabrina Stevens 2. Why Educators Need to Step Up and Address Racial Injustice by Melinda Anderson I know this world. I know it well and when you know what you know, you get up and move forward regardless of people issues. Heck, you do it in spite of those issues. I recall a conversation with one of my former students in which she talked about feeling de-valued. She sat in her classes asking questions and providing feedback only to be ignored and denied the right to speak up.  She spoke about feeling like her thoughts were not valid until they were validated by someone else. It was as if she was to be silent which is exactly what she did. She stopped talking. She stopped offering feedback. She stopped allowing her genius to shine which is odd because in her job as a student, her genius should have been shining all day. We do this work for her…for kids like her so that their world is not this. Their world is not ours. It’s not about me…but then again, it is.        

Today, I pulled into my parent’s driveway and was immediately met at my car by my nephew smiling ear to ear. He was so excited because he heard something that he did not agree with in school and rushed home to test his theory…(his words) Below is the conversation that we had. B: Guess what Auntie, my teacher wasn’t so perfect today! Me: What happened? B: Well today she was telling us about horizontal symmetry, vertical symmetry and diagonal symmetry and she said that an oval had diagonal symmetry and it doesn’t. Me: Really? How do you know? B: Well, I drew one, cut it out and folded it and it looks like a messed up taco! I also made a circle. It has symmetry. See! (shows me his cut outs) Me: Braeden, did you show this to your teacher? B: No, she wouldn’t listen. She told me that I was wrong when I said that an oval didn’t have diagonal symmetry and all of the kids said that I was wrong. I think that they were thinking of the letter "o" since it’s a circle. Me: That’s interesting. Why do think that? B: Well, the circle has symmetry everywhere as long as you fold it down the middle. You know what, maybe they were confused with congruence. Me: (I had no idea that he knew this word) Please explain this! B: Well, if you cut the oval in a diagonal and flip the pieces around, they are congruent. That’s not the same as symmetry because you had to flip it. (He then proceeds to show me!) Me: (After smiles, hugs and fist pumps) Braeden, did you come home and do this? B: Yes I did. I thought about it all day and I came home to test it out and I was right. I’m so happy auntie. I made this too… He then turned on his ipad and showed me what he created using Geometry Pad, a digital confirmation of his theory. What I learned: Never underestimate a kid who thrives on creative investigation. (Truthfully, I knew this already) I have to wonder how different that lesson would have been had those children been able to investigate this in class. What kind of conversations could they have had? While I am not happy with his school lecture and complete ignoring of his questions, I am so proud that this kid has it in him to come home and test things out. His face lit up just as bright as if he were sewing puppets or molding clay. When we deny kids the right to be inquisitive, to develop their own understanding…we are robbing them of the ability to truly understand.  

Two nights this week, I taught sessions on creating with thinglink and they were both probably two of my favorite sessions this year. Let me be clear in saying that as much as I love thinglink…a 90-minute to 2-hour session on basically pasting a link on an image is pushing it and can be a ridiculously boring few hours so, I did some homework on my own and made sure that the session was taught to not only be interactive but useful for the teachers in my session. "Blerding" Out My Session: Making Boring A Bit More Fun and Playful 1. Eliminate the "10-15-minute" Login Time I provided a link in my session description for teachers to pre-create their teacher accounts. Doing this saved about 10-15 minutes of talking them through finding the login on the page. I may have had 1-2 teachers that did not take this step but the others did and also explored prior to class. 2. Share Resources Up Front and Communicate that You Encourage Play!  In lieu of a ppt, gslide, prezi, smore or tackk…I made a one pager using onepagerapp.com. This site is totally meant for people who really want to make ONE page as that is the limit on a free account.  So, this is my ONE.  I also created a thinglink with tons of information which is embedded in the one pager. Making learning as interactive as possible ALONG WITH your bubbly personality makes for a session that teachers LOVE. 3. Speaking of Canva…Share Other Stuff Too! The moment that I started talking about canva, teachers were creating accounts and creating their own graphics. This surprised the heck out of me and I totally had a "Sheldon loves trains" moment. It was like a ripple effect, started from 1-2 and then grew to almost the entire room of canva creations to thinglink! Any time that teachers can walk away understanding about another idea is a win. The fact that this session was built to be one that encouraged up front creativity made sharing crazy fun "thinglink add-ons" such a fun experience. 4. Go Crazy Over Teacher Work! I was dying with excitement over my room of autonomous learners. They started with creating graphics about themselves and grew to designing for their classes. We shared, followed each other and made a big deal over each creation. The image below was created during the session. 5. If the Opportunity Arises, Challenge Thought on Student Learning Who doesn’t nerd out over student brilliance? My session ended up going over a bit over as we discussed what students could and could not do. Truthfully, I could talk about this all day and we almost did! It was especially refreshing to hear their thoughts while also sharing my own experiences. Rome wasn’t built in a day but any time that we have to deeply discuss is an opportunity to change minds. There is nothing more exciting than learning from a place of joy and fun and that is what "nerding out" or "blerd-ing out" is about. I’ve found that teachers are rarely bored to pieces if they get to make, do and create. More of that…More Nerd-Outs…daily!  

Anyone that knows me knows how much I loathe self-promotion. As a matter of fact, I wanted a long hot shower yesterday just to wash away of all remnants of "promotion" after having to post the "vote for me" link in order to go to Canada for SMART. I probably just might need votes as I am not on a campus to place this in the hands of my students…which I would never do. To be fair, the SMART vote is probably more "timeline spamming" than "self-promotion" but that too is somewhat loathsome in terms of how I roll in my connected life. It’s just not me. As I talked this out with a friend, because of course I needed "therapy", she reminded me… "In this field, there has to be some type of self-promotion. Who will come to your sessions if they don’t know what it is that you do?" At that moment, it clicked for me in a major way. I may loathe sharing parts of myself on twitter but to be in this field and to continue to be able to open doors for myself, I’ve got to let certain hang-ups go. To be honest, whether I like it or not, in the world of edtech…what you do only matters if others benefit and you can show it. I would not have my job without self-promoting in some way. I realize this. I often complain about conferences only gravitating towards the same featured speakers but when you think about it, those are the people that promoted themselves so much that they no longer have to self-promote, others do it for them. People show up to hear them even when the entire presentation is a duplicate of the last 10 events and they tweet it like it’s all brand new. As much as I detest this entire practice, it’s a part of the game and to be in this world, you have to play it. If you’re not going to play it…why are you here? With that said, I am not going to be all "hey look at me" repeatedly all over my timeline because I have something else that I’m quite proud of and that is integrity. (I’m talking major…major…major flooding…not mild. Mild is good…Major is not so much) I look at how much I share about my nephew and one of these days, that kid will owe me 10% of his earnings for all of the Braeden-promotion that I’ve done! (I’m kidding) I said that to point out that I am, by nature, someone that would rather amplify others than myself and it’s time that I learn to share more of my own expertise while still maintaining the core of who I am. While I promise not to flood timelines with every honor that I may have, I will do more of sharing my work because at the end of the day…that’s what I want to be known for. That is who I am…my brand.

Yesterday, my nephew along with another student, were assigned a day of ISS for a "lunch infraction". My nephew’s principal took the time to call my sister and basically back up her decision with part of the story… including an admission of guilt that was more coerced than bribing a kid with candy in a candy store. This is my open letter to her after hearing from Braeden. (She won’t speak to me…trust me) Dear Principal, I know that every parent says that their kid is innocent in school infractions and typically, especially in the case of the other children in our family, we take the punishment…suck it up and learn the lesson. Today was different and not because it was Braeden but because you didn’t even really bother to investigate beyond your own agenda. Your decision to send both children to ISS was a cop out and yet another poor decision on your part as a school leader. Had you taken the time at all to get to know the students in your school, you would have known about Braeden’s character. He doesn’t speak often and not because of your "fear tactics" but because he’s often analyzing who you are in his head while you speak. Yesterday, you were Judge Judy…his words…and that wasn’t a compliment. It’s interesting that you made a point to tell him that you didn’t know him because you’ve never seen him in your office. You claimed to have watched a video, yet you admitted that you couldn’t really tell from the video who did what so you immediately told Braeden during "interrogation"… "It had to be you. You were the one responsible. You were the one bothering her. You did it, didn’t you?" He didn’t speak up so you took it as a sign of guilt. You had an agenda and you wanted this situation to go a certain way…so you made it so. Had you taken a moment to really look into this you would have known that all year long, this little girl has harassed my nephew so much that she has been told time and again to NOT sit near him in lunch. Had you watched the tape closely, maybe you would have seen her repeatedly kicking him under the table so hard that he has a bruise on his leg. You would have seen him raising his hand multiple times and being ignored by your staff because there is a thing against tattling, right? If you had a relationship with our child and talked to him in lieu of AT him, you would have heard how he kept trying to look around and ignore her to avoid being in trouble while she kicked him. You would have heard him say…"I know that she wanted my attention because she wouldn’t stop kicking me but I kept trying to ignore her." Just to be clear… A little girl, with a history of harassing a boy, sits across from him at lunch and repeatedly kicks him. She calls him bipolar to which he retorts back…"no, you’re bipolar". She continues to kick him. He looks around to ignore her and tries to tell. He’s ignored. She continues to kick him and with one hard frustrated kick, he lifted his leg back in reflex. He raises his hand to tell and she lifts hers right after. A teacher comes over and takes the little girl’s words as law. Both children are taken to you. You watch the video and see nothing. So, you interrogate and place your own ideas of what happened into the equation. Not one time did you seek the actual truth before deciding that both children would spend a day together…side by side…in ISS. Even with what happened, this would have been a great moment to discuss conflict resolution where both children could walk away learning a lesson instead of being locked up…in a room. Braeden has never been in trouble a day in his life and you’ve accomplished nothing today but further breaking his spirit. The boy who is so meticulous about the details in his homework, being on time to school, playing by the rules and trying to do his best on everything that he does….gets to spend a whole day in ISS for something that could have been settled outside of that system. Mission accomplished…right? Signed Aunt Advocate

If you ask most habitual "twitter using" teachers about social media, they pretty much swear that any changes in their classroom that have occurred happened as a result of twitter. I can’t argue with that statement either as my own life and career has been greatly enhanced by the addition of social media. We’ve even made a point to include social media sessions at almost every educational event…as we should. Twitter has been amazing in communicating the great things of edu but after talking to a few struggling teachers who are also on social media, I have to wonder if the "one-sided" shared positives are painting pictures of perfection that rarely exist. Has the socially connected teacher and classroom become one big stock photo? The Perfect Images of Twitter EDU Yesterday, I had a long discussion with a group of connected and non-connected educators about social media in our classrooms. The connected educators swore by it but admitted to feeling less than capable compared to every other teacher that they followed. The words…"no one else seems to have kids that struggle" resonated with me. However, the most cringe worthiest statement was this… "It’s like every classroom is a stepford classroom and mine doesn’t fit" Ouch! The Socially Painted Picture When my kids take selfies, they take as many as 10-15 images just to capture one. I’m just as guilty in doing that. The perfect filter can add even more dimension to a shot. It’s human nature to only share the parts of us that look great because struggle may show weakness and that is often hard. That’s the perception anyway. From a classroom perspective, we share the lesson that worked. We share our best that our kids have done. Our work, our "selfies" are no different than those of my teenagers and that includes filtering. As much as we know that "it’s not about the tech, but the learning" and that "technology doesn’t make a bad teacher a great teacher"…most only share the tech. Sharing a great tool is more comfortable than sharing a moment of impact from instruction. Of course, I understand what can and cannot be shared in the social realm. However, I think that we can only help further our cause of improving classrooms if we expand on sharing beyond the perfect shot. We can choose to not share only the "selfie" version of ourselves and share what really matters…how we are truly impacting kids…ALL of them. They all have a story…the good, the bad and everything in between. When we leave those stories out, we are in essence saying that the "imperfect parts" matter less. Your Challenge: Talk About Something Else Whether in twitter chats or blogs, we’re not changing anything by only looking at the "shiny tools" and learning that results. There are other factors of edu at play. Let’s talk about… How to address needs of diverse learners Working with struggling students Reaching gifted kids in a mixed ability class Teaching children of color Challenges with girls vs boys Technology divide (BYOD is NOT for everyone) Addressing Learning Gaps Motivating the "I don’t want to be here kid" Children of poverty Teaching in a "disconnected" environment Teaching & remaining sane amidst a plethora of mandates Difficult parent/teacher conversations Being a rockstar even if you don’t feel like it (because we should all be this) (I could go on and on. You get the idea) Education isn’t perfect and it most certainly isn’t all about the technology. It’s time that we expand these conversations. I don’t want the "stock photo" of education. I want the real deal.

This morning I looked at my twitter profile and felt sick inside. It was literally a paragraph largely defined by tools. Not to take anything away from my inner tech expert, but I am much more than the tools that previously defined my profile. The thing is that in this field, we are all pretty much experts of the same thing…figuring out how to do stuff really well. Here’s the million dollar question… In the big scheme of things, does it really matter if my twitter profile reads that I am a tech specialist, haiku deck guru, smart exemplary educator, common sense media educator, den star, google educator, blogger…etc It most certainly does not. I am proud of all that I have accomplished. I am even more proud of the lives that I know I have touched and I’m not done yet because I’m still living and learning which, to me, is a much bigger deal than every tool that I know really well. One might say that the "commercialized titles" (credentials) increase your visibility in the field. I disagree. What increases your visibility is what you share, how you share and how often you do it. Submit proposals, speak at conferences, blog, host or participate in hangouts. Collaborate. Be true to who you are. That is what matters. I have a blog and an about me page. I also have a resume…a CV to house all of the honors. I even added a side bar linking to those spaces where applicable. I work towards additional certifications and "commercialized honors" because I want to be the best at what I do. However, what I do is not who I am and to me, that is what a "profile identity" is about. It’s about me….not the things. Be all that you are for the YOU that loves it. Learning isn’t about the tech and who I am isn’t about a single honor that I hold. At the end of the day, the words on my profile are just words…taking up my 160 characters of space. I love and adore every community to which I am a part of and again I am incredibly proud that I have been able to accomplish what I have so far. I am an instructional technology specialist. Yes, it’s my passion. It’s my career. It’s my job. I am more than my job. At the end of the day, the most important characteristic of who I am is the one that is written first…LEARNER! Signed… Rafranz Davis LEARNER! Math and Tech Geek! Disruptor of Ridiculousness  

Yesterday, I had to remind myself of Amanda Dyke’s great post from last year, "What’s Your Job". It’s still one of my all time favorites. I was sitting at my desk revising my narrative and redoing my Haiku Deck for my NCSC14 Ignite talk. Up until Sunday, I was supposed to be in New Orleans to give this talk live but that trip was cut because I needed to be at work to do my job with my team. I will admit to being upset, but as I settled in on the importance of what I was doing and how it was impacting kids, I stopped pouting because there really is nothing more important than that. Besides, doing my part to support our student media fair is so rewarding that I could just hug every one of those children whether they win or not. To see the work that they’ve created proves how valuable technology is for their learning. Speaking of NCSM14…when I told Suzanne Alejandre of the Math Forum, that I could no longer participate in the ignite, the idea of doing it virtually just came out of nowhere. Without hesitation, I agreed because anytime that I can share tidbits from my math classroom, I am all over it! I recorded my session using movenote, which is an incredible application for storytelling. I tried to adhere to 15 seconds/slide which would have been easier with a built in auto-timer but I’m proud of the end result. Teaching to the Kids in the Back of the Room The Bammy Awards Nomination Yesterday, AFTER submitting my ignite, I happened to check my spam at work and came across my Bammy Award nomination email which was such a timely surprise. As I sat there overanalyzing while trying to determine how on earth anyone got my school email (It’s not hard) and thinking that I clearly needed to change my LinkedIn picture…I understood the significance of the nomination itself and I am deeply honored to be recognized amongst my peers who happen to be amazing technologist and members of my PLN. I’ve watched the Bammy awards in the past and I will still struggle with the whole "vote for me" part. During the last run, I can’t tell you how many DMs that I received from people asking me to vote for them and I will stand firm in NOT doing that because to me, that took away from the honor itself of being nominated and rated by your peers. The significance of the Bammy’s, in my opinion,  shouldn’t be about the ranks of popularity but should be about the quality of work that we do. I share my life, every twist and turn, because of how I have been impacted by others who do the same. If my writing, sharing and connecting has had any impact on anyone else, that is my award in and of itself. The Bammy nomination is a nice bonus. With that said, this is a great platform to honor your peers and whether you vote for me or not, I encourage you to nominate those who have impacted you.

There is a myth that technology experts/specialist have all of the tech answers. We don’t. As a matter fact, if it were not for collaboration and google search, my trainings would be a black sheet of nothing…well, almost nothing! I do have SOME innovative ideas of my own. Technology is an ever-changing bowl of vegetable soup. What worked today may not be there tomorrow. Heck what worked 10 minutes ago, just might be working differently! We have to constantly stay on top of changes, trends and even ideas. That is literally a part of the job. We can’t know everything but we can know how to find what we need. Personally, I rely on resources shared by many of my friends as well as ideas that we collaborate on. I’ll be honest in saying that at conferences, I rarely learn anything new because before it’s at a conference, it’s been on twitter and that is typically where my learning occurs. Yes, I’ve Gone Google! My school district is a GAFE district so it’s been really important to me to learn deeply so that I can be more effective for the teachers that I support across the district. I decided to take the Google Educator certification exams and to start, I took the "Chromebook" track. To become a certified google educator, you must take 4 core exams and one exam of choice. I think that I got a bit ahead of myself and tried to take my last two exams in the same day. I didn’t go through the entire chromebook course content and there were questions that I did not know or didn’t read thoroughly. I did not pass my chromebook test the first time and while I was upset, I learned that I needed to be more mindful of taking the same advice that I would give students… You don’t know everything. Take your time to learn even if you think that you know it! I could’ve given up but I didn’t. I actually bought the chrome browser test a few days later, passed and earned my certification. Of course, I couldn’t just go without passing my chromebook test so after 7 days, I took my chromebook test again and earned that endorsement too. The bottom line is that while we do not know everything, we are always looking to be better at what we do. We should anyway. When you don’t know…search for it. If you can’t find it…ask. By the way, We have this amazing image hanging in our office … "how to be a tech expert". I found it online at https://xkcd.com/627/. Enjoy!

When I was in high school, I was an officer on the dance team. We had strict requirements to adhere to regarding appearance. One of those requirements was that we all had to wear the exact same color of tights for performances "flesh tone" rose. Our director was adamant that our legs had to be "uniform" which meant that regardless of skin tone, every girl had rose colored legs. She said that it created a visual feel of one single unit…that we were all the same. She defended her decision by saying that she didn’t see race and that all dance teams wore the same attire. Yeah…ok. I remember my mother, along with a few mothers of other black girls on the line, fighting to allow us to purchase tights that matched our own skin tones. They were denied. If we wanted to dance, we had to wear the tights…and so we did. It was an odd thing to be embarrassed about the color of my legs when I was so proud of the color of my skin. I think that this is where my mother coined her famous Friday night phrase… "Smile baby! Act like you own the place!" In those moments, I didn’t think about the tights, my rose legs or the embarrassment of them both. I thought of smiling for my mother and the little girls that stood along the rails watching me…looking like me…and wanting to be me…tights and all. Learning through a Rose Colored Lens I thought of this story after I read Jose Vilson’s piece, "Your Kids Don’t Actually Feel Like They Belong Afterall". Day after day, I watch conversations that place kids in a box of the same unit. Yes, kids are kids and learning is learning but they are different and to deny that is denying them to be them. I thought about culturally responsive teaching which is actually a gradable component on many educator evaluations. It’s not about changing a few names in a word problem to be more "cultural sounding". It most certainly isn’t about including specific stereotypical moments in a lesson either. (saw a math lesson last year about a gangster getting arrested…yep…it happened)  It’s about making sure that the experiences and perspectives of students are a purposeful and integral part of learning. My mother taught me that the tights were like a mask, shielding who we were from our teacher, as she was unwilling to see. She taught me that small minded people could not define who I was and if I had to dance in purple tights, I’d still own it. I was lucky in having my mother…someone to instill a sense of self-worth in me. Let’s hope that the rest of our kids have that too.