This spring I am getting the chance to teach a college course again for future teachers, this time all around educational technology for secondary education. While working over lessons and figuring out the main ideas I wanted to make sure were highlighted, there is one that I have always stated any time someone has asked me for advice for new teachers, and that is the tip that really has made me the educator I am today.

You need to connect with others, others who are not at your school, others who don’t even teach what you teach, and others who may have a different experience and background than you. We can so easily get stuck thinking about teaching and learning in one certain way if we are surrounded by those who are like us, who have experienced the same education as us, who are in the same exact environment as us. It is when we can escape this echo chamber that we can truly grow as an educator, and as a learner.

I still remember when I started using social media to grow as an educator, to seek out new ideas and perspectives that would help me become the educator I wanted to become. I was not happy with the results in my classroom and I knew I could do better but I just didn’t have great ideas how. I was teaching at a small school and there was not a ton of different ideas around teaching and learning being shared there. Through social media I started following educators who were trying things I had not heard about before, they were sharing the successes and struggles they were experiencing, as well as everything they had learned throughout the way. Ideas like mastery learning, standards-based and standards-referenced grading, flipped learning, different formative assessment techniques, different ways to view homework and grading in general; all of these ideas opened my mind to better ways that I could help my students learn.

I have over the last 15 years connected with educators across the country and across the world. I have been able to take part in great learning experiences from the Google Innovator Academy in Boulder in 2016, an EdCamp leadership summit that forever will be remembered when I think of cheesecake, and then all of the great in-person conversations that happened at education conferences because of connections that started online. I have met people who have such a high passion for their work that they continually inspire me to keep trying new things and to look for ways that we can improve for our students. I have people that I can call on if I need help in a certain area or if I just need someone to bounce an idea off of who will provide good feedback to help me grow and not just get stuck on an idea.

These connections have made me a better educator, much better than I ever could have become just by myself. As I finally get to make it back to a large education conference, I am most looking forward to meeting up with some of those people I have connected with but not been able to see in a long time. I am also looking forward to trying to form more connections with others who may help continue this path of growth that I have been on for the last 15 years. While the social media tools have changed, those connections are still what can drive me, and you, forward. So go out, and find others who will push you, who will support you, who will inspire you to be the educator you want to be.