Cool teachers wear bow ties

This past week I've really been thinking about how I can be a cool teacher. Should I get an arsenal of jokes? Should I give them coffee on a Friday? Should I have a talking parrot in class? Should I wear a bow tie?

Luckily, it seems to me that Instagram, Blogger and Twitter might come to my rescue. Being a Life Science and Life Orientation teacher, media and social media may actually be really functional. Here are a few things that I will definitely consider.

Firstly, in Life Orientation, a lot of the topics covered are not necessarily a matter of fact, but rather a matter of opinion. The sooner you empower a teenager with their own voice, the better. Thus, having a Blog to post their thoughts or opinions on a matter such as relationships or rights, may be invaluable. Not only will it give them a platform to air their thoughts, but also a place to comment on other's opinions and shape their own. To utilize this as best as possible, no criteria or specifications should be given, adding a creative and personal level for the learners to explore.

Secondly, in Life Science, YouTube and Instagram can become my best friends. Having science experiments and explanations readily available on YouTube is amazing. More importantly, YouTube and Instagram can be a great way of handing in assessments. Experiments can be documented and presented in creative and alternative ways, posted on YouTube, watched by the entire class and assessed by everyone at once. It is an awesome opportunity for peer assessment and sharing knowledge.

Thirdly, as a teacher, Twitter and Blogger are great platforms to communicate with other teachers. How privileged are we not to have an entire support network at the touch of a button? These are great places to get new ideas for class and to meet people in your subject area. These platforms can also be used to keep parents up to date about classes and experiences that you and the learners may have had during the day.

Finally, media allows learning to continue long after the school day has finished. Finding something interesting on YouTube or reading Blogs about the different views people of the world might have on religion, may be very enriching. The absolute key here is to teach learners responsible media use. Not only about stranger danger, but also how social media never really deletes anything, how to spot a cyberbully, how to spellcheck and how to know when something is better kept to yourself. Privacy should still be valued and something that might harm another person should not be posted. The consequences should thus be made very clear. Learners should also know how to vet information, because everything on 9gag or Reddit may not be true.

All these things are extremely useful when used responsibly and in conjunction with real life experiences in classrooms. But my absolute dream is to use media in my class to overcome one thing.

Competition.

Not the healthy kind, but the kind that makes students hide knowledge from each other to maintain their competitive edge. Forcing them to engage with each other's knowledge and to share it with each other, might help to some extent to build a collective basis of information between them. I do hope that this is not a naive thing to say, because I'm not known for being naive. Competition can be something that brings about anxiousness and stress and not motivation. I would love for that to not be that case in my classroom. Maybe I'll be a cool teacher then. If that doesn't work, I'll go for the parrot or the bow tie.