Pondering the Imperfectly Perfect Profile for Teachers

I need to take some new profile pics. I don't want pics of me looking smart in front of people, I want pictures of me doing cool things with my students – sweating at a ballgame cheering for my children and students – doing gate duty at the softball field – helping the kids make sure they've remembered everything in their study hall – counting magazines for magazine turn in day. The pictures from conferences, I'd rather them be pictures of me with friends than looking smart in front of a crowd. I love the crowd and speaking and connecting, but it is the people that are so wonderful to see.

This is my life and who I am. While very thankful for the times I get out to speak, I don't feel like a very polished person sometimes.

I do feel like I love my students and love teachers and parents and what that to come through everything I do. But how do I capture that in my media spaces? Grappling with this desire to chart a new course. I really WANT to be a teacher who stays in the classroom and encourages other teachers. I WANT to be helpful and real. I WANT teachers to know that they can do it and make their own way.

All of this has convinced me that there is no one for me to follow. It is about charting my own course. You too.

As my pastor, Michael Catt says,

“They don't make statues to conformists.”

And if you're a teacher who actually sees social media as a way to help others and not as your ticket “out” of the classroom, let's make this a new way to be online. If this is your ticket “out” that is OK too. We don't have to have glamour shots that make us look perfect or look like everyone in the room is listening in rapt attention to our every word. Let's be OK with who we are. We can be classroom teachers with an extended reach beyond the classroom. I've never had a glamorous day in my life in my classroom but there have been plenty of fantastic ones, quite a few good ones, and a plethora of EXHAUSTING ones where I thought I'd lose my mind. But most of my students love me and I love all of them.

A new day is dawning and I'm racing to be part of that sunrise. I'm just rebellious against all of the perfectly polished, perfectly coifed, perfectly happy people that smile at me from their profile pages — that isn't real life, at least not for a teacher. Somedays I'm just happy to make it through

Let's make a new way to be on social media – let's be real.

Will you join me? Celebrate who you are and enjoy it – social media should be fun or why do it?

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad