 Hello. Hi. I am getting ready to start my periscope. So I just want to say hello to the people who are already in and See a couple people that are joining and I have watched a lot of periscopes So I know that I need to wait for a couple of minutes for some of the live people to show up I see some of my friends. Hi Gretchen. Hi Liz. This is very exciting This always makes me feel like Gosh, what the heck was the show with the mirror at the end the kids show and she would say at the end I see I see Tracy I see Margaret and I would always wait for my name to come up and it didn't because my name hadn't hit big yet But it was coming anyway Okay, so if you're just jumping on here because you're on periscope and you have no idea what the heck this is My name is Jennifer Gonzales. I have a website for teachers called cult of pedagogy and I'm going to be talking about teaching related things So if teaching is not your thing then you probably should find another periscope because you're going to be bored So here is here's the deal. I I get a lot of mail I got a lot of email from readers and almost all of them are teachers or they're interested in education in some way and a lot of those people ask me for advice and a lot of times the more complicated the problem is the longer it sits in my inbox and I just ignore it and I feel terrible because I Want to be able to Help people and I just don't have enough time to type it all out So I thought maybe I can start once a week We'll see how it goes But I can start once a week just picking one question and answering that and then what I'm going to do is I am Going to store them in On another site called catch me and if you use periscope a lot You're probably familiar with this, but if you're not it's called katch.me and it basically serves as a Storage bin for people's periscopes So I've got a page set up for those and I'm just going to start building a library of Answers to readers questions and we'll just see how it goes. So here is the question that I decided to pick for tonight and I probably got this six weeks ago, but it was from a teacher and She said I know that it's important for me to build relationships with my colleagues But I think it might be because I'm holding the phone. This makes me very self-conscious She said I know I'm supposed to be building relationships with my colleagues, but I don't have time I'm just you know always in the classroom with my students and I'm really busy And do you know of any ways to you know to build relationships with my colleagues when there's just no time She said I'm also pretty introverted. So how do I even do this? How do I even build relationships with other teachers? So I immediately had a lot of ideas and that's the question. I'm deciding I'm going to share so first I want to address the issue of introversion because I The longer I've learned about introversion the more I realized that that is definitely me. I get get a lot of energy from being alone and So I always go toward You know places where I can be by myself and when I was a teacher I was definitely eating lunch by myself in my room just churning out the work as much as possible and So I understand that I understand You know, especially if you have a lot to do you want to just keep going and if being around people isn't all that Comfortable for you anyway, then it's just a great excuse to avoid them so my first piece of advice for somebody who is Introverted but knows, you know, they really do need to be probably making some connections with their colleagues And let me hold on let me stop myself first of all to talk about the importance of that of why is it important to Establish relationships with your colleagues That issue is probably if I had to categorize all the stuff that I think yes Thank you the Marigold post the things that I think are the most important to being successful as a teacher I would say Being surrounded by positive people who lift you up and who set a great tone for your day is One of the most important things that you can do as a teacher when I was in the classroom. I Especially my second teaching position I was really in a very toxic environment and it made me curl up and and stay within myself There were a few people in the building that I got along with really great And we would hang out and laugh and have a great time But if they weren't around I was gone I was hanging out in my room and you know when I look back on it now I Realize that what I did was I further alienated myself from the more toxic people and I kind of labeled them in my head You know, and I've got the label for them as walnut trees in the Marigold post but I I Think sometimes it's unfair. I think when you label somebody as a walnut tree as a as a toxically negative person I think it's self-preserving to do that you know, what you're doing is you're protecting yourself from being influenced by them and from Letting them make you feel bad about yourself as a teacher However, I think if you put, you know a sharpie on them with that label You you never have any opportunity to sort of grow in your relationship Hey, Rachelle, so you never have an opportunity to grow in your relationship with those people and really some of the people Who seem really toxic they may just have become that way. Hi, Natalie They may have just become toxic recently, you know a lot of people a lot of teachers I think who are super negative. They didn't start that way. They got that way from being around other negative teachers So long story short, I think even with some of your more negative teachers. It's important to Not completely avoid them because I think there's a lot of value in the relationships with them And also with just other teachers the the more people in your building you feel comfortable with The healthier you're gonna sort of feel every day at school Yes, everyone does have a little positive in them and and really it's a gift that you can give I think if I were to go back into the classroom full-time now, I would make way more of an effort to get to know those Negative teachers. Yes. Oh Amanda right now. She just said I feel you all can see that I feel compliments help Absolutely, this wasn't even gonna be my topic, but you're right Compliment a genuine compliment to a person who's just a negative Nancy all the time It can go a long way I had a had one of these negative teachers and I Worked with one of her sons on a project. He's sort of just like helped me my room one day for something This is one of her actual students and or one of her actual kids her actual biological son And he just had the nicest manners and he was just really friendly and helpful and just earnest and I Thank you. I Told her the next time I saw her I said, you know your son was just fantastic today He he came in my room. He helped me move some furniture. He you know, whatever I just kind of gushed about him for a little while and I said I just think you did such a great job with him And I just wanted you to know man. She and I were like this from that point forward I didn't feel uncomfortable around her anymore. She was sweet to me That was it and the thing was it wasn't like I was trying to butter her up and make something up for her I just really did I Don't know you're just right compliments definitely help. You never know what will be the case So my point in all of this I'm getting off topic a little bit But it's really important the relationships that you have with your colleagues are really really important so if you are an introverted person one small step that you can make is to Just say hi first and this is such a tiny thing But I am somebody who if I'm walking past somebody in a hall if they don't make eye contact with me I am not gonna say hey Dolores. I'm just not I'm not gonna ever go first, which is terrible and it's baby-ish and I think a lot of people kind of feel that way they kind of are like I don't want to be the first one to say hi What if the person blows me off or whatever so just doing that little bit just saying hi first is a step Going to the teacher's lounge and having lunch and sitting by somebody that you don't know very well and just saying hey How are you just starting the conversation? Even if it's killing you to be that person to start it just a little bit sometimes all you have to do is say How have you been and people will just go on and on and on and they love to be listened to so Those little tiny baby steps can help so much and they don't take a lot of time Another small way that you can build relationships with your colleagues in little bits of time Is to just ask them for help if you're struggling with something and you just say do you know? Do you have anything that would help me with this issue or whatever it is people love to be asked for help? They really do they love especially if it is a veteran teacher. They love to Share their expertise and what you're doing when you ask for help is you're showing that vulnerability That is necessary to start to connect with people and it just doesn't take that much time So yes, and once you share your vulnerability, then they will too and those burials Barriers will start to come down. So anyway, this doesn't take a whole lot of time But oh another thing use social media I mean if you if you start in a new school and you've got a clean Facebook account or Instagram account or whatever Whatever your your social media of choice is Find the other teachers and and send them friend requests I mean, it's just so simple and it's amazing to me sometimes how well I get to know somebody Once I have become just sort of like Facebook friends with them We'll click yes on the friend request and you go and look and look at all their pictures And you can see that pictures of their kids and everything and it's just a super quick way to start to get to know them Okay, however, I have got the whamboozle big big deal This is a tool that I that I have personally used over the last year That has been hands-down the most significant relationship builder of them all and It is called Voxer and I am going to demonstrate how it works tonight if you don't know what this is and I feel like a broken record I talked to people about it all the time my sister lives in Thailand I keep trying to get her to use it because we can talk to each other like that and she's just sort of like yeah Whatever, but it is an app that is free and you can put it on an Android or an iPhone or an iPad or an iPod It's just an app free app and it works like a walkie-talkie So you press a button and you talk and then the other person talks back and it's it's almost like voicemail But way easier and here's one of my voxer friends just got on perfect. So Since I started Using voxer I have been invited into voxer chats with other people you can be in a chat with dozens of other people All around the same a similar topic Okay, so I've been in one that was started by a guy named Brian Stabnik and he has a podcast like I do It's called talks with teachers and he's a wonderful person and he has just kind of like pulled together people a little at a time Who have shared interests and who have such a passion for teaching and we've literally been having a conversation for I've been in it for about 16 months now and We've gone through like a full school year Wished each other happy summer started the new school year and we just kind of keep up with each other's lives And we get into all these great conversations and we're constantly talking about why aren't more people using these because Like if again if I was in the classroom right now It would be such a great tool for connecting with other people sort of like in my in my middle school I was on a team with four other people grade level one math teacher You know one science teacher and we would have meetings if we just had a voxer group We would be able to talk all the time I could get on after school in my car press a button and start talking and say I had a real big issue today with Damon Here's what he did and I could tell everybody the story It's a totally private little network and I can talk all I want to and then they can immediately Whenever they see the message they can listen to it and answer it or they can listen to it in three days If they want to it doesn't have to be immediate and then they can talk back and you get to know each other So much better because it's your voices. There's something about that vulnerability in another person's voice That really Gretchen. Thank you Gretchen Shultek just she just posted a link to it looks like a do's and don'ts for voxer the blog post that she may have written because there's There's some some etiquette. I think that we've started to develop over time I want to show you how it works because what I would love for you to do if you've not tried this before Or maybe somebody kind of made you put it on your phone But then you've never really done anything with it is Find one other person that you work with or even if you don't work with anybody that you really want to talk to Maybe it's somebody that you student taught with or maybe it is somebody who is a teacher that you know But they live across the country get them on voxer get each other's user names open up a chat and just start talking and You will probably get addicted. I'm in so many voxer chats I can't keep up with them anymore And so the first thing that I say when I get on a voxer chat is always I'm so sorry. I haven't been in here for so long Okay, I'm gonna turn my phone around. I want to show you what this looks like and I think I double tap to do this Can somebody tell me how to Please Wow, the veins are really rocking tonight. I'm gonna double tap again and see if that works Swipe down double tap to flip camera. I am okay Sorry, that's a whiny moment. Okay, so what I'm looking at right now Is sort of like my inbox? Okay, and these are a bunch of different I apologize if you all are looking at your own names if Some of my friends just happened to be the most recent person who talks. So this is the talks with teachers Thing and it looks like I have 246 outstanding messages, which I don't because I've got this loaded onto my daughter's iPad right now Okay, so okay, here's a message from my friend Jay. I'm gonna just play it for a second Even though he didn't give me permission, but this is just to show you how it works Watching the CNN Democratic Town Hall, okay? Oh, okay. Here's Michael Michael's actually in our Periscope and he's talking so I'm gonna play his This is great. I love seeing you on Periscope Jennifer you're doing a great job. Thank you. Let's say and then here's how I talk I press this button Michael, thank you so much. Thanks for jumping on so that we can demonstrate box sort of people I really appreciate it and I press the button again and now it's just this long string of You can type or talk. These are all different talking messages and you just You can leave as many messages we're probably talking all about books there. So okay, double tap again No double tap All right, you just keep looking up. Hey, Jory see there's there's Jory and when a person is actually live talking Then it lights up green, but once they're done. It's just saved as a message Yeah, I'm I'm enjoying this talk to Jennifer. This is very very informative and thank you for all the good ideas So here's the cool thing Jory's in California Michael is in New Jersey. Jay is in Minnesota I'm in Kentucky. That's me and we talk all across the country with each other all the time and It's just fantastic. I'm double tapping on my screen like crazy. I don't know if this is an Android problem Okay I may have to just like turn the phone around and do the rest of it. Oh Hey, there we go. Yay. All right, that is boxer. Okay Really seriously give it a try Especially if you have a friend who's already using it That would probably be the best way to use it because if you and somebody else has never used it before You may both kind of get in the frame of mind where it's like, I don't really feel like doing this or whatever Here's my other piece of advice about using boxer though. Talk some people get on boxer and they just text and text and text Sometimes I think it's because they are hi, Jason I think it's because they are just so used to texting but it's so much faster to talk and it's so much I've been in some boxer groups where people only type all the time and I'm just like forget it I want to hear your voice. I want to hear you and get to know you better. So it's just really Such a valuable tool. It's really I don't use this term much much But it has been life changing for me and for a lot of other people who I'm in chats with because yes It is great for commuting. I almost look forward to when I have a long drive because I know, okay I'm going to get in the car. I'm going to open up one of these chats that has a lot of Outstanding messages. All you do is press the the last one that you didn't listen to and it just keeps playing them in sequence You don't have to keep looking down at your phone and playing them. So it's just Really fantastic. It's just a great great tool. Okay. My very last tip for Building relationships with teachers if you don't have a lot of time is this Go into each other's classrooms and I'm not talking about During planning period not during their planning period, but try to set up informal observation times with them as much as you can I wrote a book this last year. It's called Hacking Education And it's just got these 10 really great ideas and I should have hung it up But one of the hacks that we introduced to like help schools get better is called the pineapple chart And the pineapple chart is this chart that teachers can put up in in the staff room That lists all the class periods for the day and all of the the days of the week and teachers just write down Some cool thing that they're doing that day like we're dissecting frogs on wednesday third period And it's an advertisement to say hey come in to my classroom anybody who wants to come in and watch what we're doing Come in and watch and that open invitation is fantastic. It's just it's I feel like it's so bonding to watch another teacher with their students They are all different people when they're with their students And so again if you can invite other teachers to come in and just hang out you can say even just come Come grade papers in the back of my room or something It really creates a bond between you and you don't have to add any extra time to your day to do that So i'm going to stop for now because I feel like I want to end on a positive note And it's probably going to take me 10 minutes to figure out how to turn this off. So I am going to Shoot for around this time next week. I'll pick another question and if uh, if you and I are not familiar with each other Go to my website If you look at my username, it's cult of pedagogy just add a dot com to that and that is my website And there's just a treasure trove of stuff for teachers in there So, uh, thank you all so much for coming. This is really cool. And thanks for all the hearts and um, yeah I'll maybe I'll see you next week. Thank you so much Stop broadcast Oh for heaven's sake No