A Day in the Life of a First-Year Teacher

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Embracing Facebook in 2012

Happy 2012!


As I was standing in Times Square (the "Crossroads of the World") with my roommates on New Year's Eve waving to the cameras and shouting, I started thinking, "how should I celebrate the New Year in terms of my teaching?". As every teacher knows, reflection and growth are two of the biggest factors to consider and do in your first year teaching - and this reflection will set the tone for the years to come.


Well, here's my idea. Ready?


My idea was to start a Facebook fan page for my pre-algebra classes. On that page, I can post homework, info about upcoming quizzes & tests, interesting or helpful links, help students with homework, questions on class notes and help my classroom advance in to the 21st Century. I figured since I'm pretty familiar with Facebook and Facebook apps and capabilities and most of my students are CONSTANTLY chatting about Facebook and what happened there, etc in class, I can use it to my advantage, right?


I am worried about a couple of things though. I'm worried that maybe setting up this Facebook page might come too close to the edge in terms of the student-teacher relationship and that some students might not want to join because they might think that if their friends found out that they joined some teacher's academic/school related page on Facebook that they might fear being labeled as "nerds" or "uncool".


I would really like to do something as innovative like this, but am unsure about how to implement it and unsure about any potential consequences that may occur by following through.


Have any of you implemented a plan similar to this or are considering doing so? I did get some inspiration from teachers and teacher bloggers like Senorita in the City I'm interested in hearing about how that went if any teachers out there have done something similar. Shoot me a comment if you have!


That's all for now. Thanks for reading!

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