The greatest thing about teaching in the 21st century is a teacher’s ability to teach beyond the allotted class time traditionally given to teachers. Over the past few years, I have extended my teaching platform and not just with things like project based learning and flipped classroom (that are all the rave these days), but with digital exchanges with my students after they’ve moved on from my class. There’s something about social media that just makes it so easy to keep teaching. Student’s have no qualms about scratching a quick Facebook message (mostly because formality doesn’t exist on the “book”). Because of this, my role as a teacher has evolved to more of that of an academic mentor.
I write to encourage teachers to share your passions with your students. By energetically sharing my passions with my students they know exactly when to get back in touch for information that I have.
When the government shutdown last week I received a message that morning via facebook and an email that afternoon, both from previous students. One of whom was only in my class for six months and left the school, the other I had for one year. Neither go to my school or are even in the same state as me anymore. These messages arrived shortly after a separate facebook message exchange I had with a former student after the chemical weapons controversy
They asked for my perspective because they know I’m passionate about politics and will give them a straight answer. It saves them the boredom of reading an article from a website that they don’t fully understand, and it gives them a human interaction with an old teacher. From this interaction, they are ready to engage in an academic conversation about this topic. And, if they’re really interested, they can use this knowledge as a foundation to go looking for more.
I don’t write this post to pat myself on the back about my students contacting me to continue learning, I write it to implore teachers everywhere to convey their passions to their students. And, in doing so, don’t talk down to students, meet them where they are and be objective. This has led me to better, deeper teaching that goes beyond the school year. And, judging from the messages I have received, these students desperately need some guidance on these topics about which they asked... But, alas, that’s a story for another post about civics and informed citizens.
