Teacher Only Week - Tony Ryan

Model your smile, Enhance the Learning, Find out with ZEST, Share it, See it.

I really enjoyed listening to Tony Ryan today and although much of the information he talked about was things I'd heard before in different places I still thought it was a very worthwhile day.  The ideas above describe some of the main ideas he went over today.

Model Your Smile
It's so important to be inspiring in your classroom having that energy and enthusiasm for what you're doing is contagious.  Like anyone else though I have my bad days where things just don't go right.  Tony taught us today about finding ways to put a smile back on your face or at least getting yourself to think about your attitude towards things.  One of those was putting a pen in your mouth and then moving your lips away from your pen... it was a very funny sight to see a room full of 80+ teachers with pens in their mouths ... I really should have had my camera out!

I managed to jump on Tony's blog before listening to the presentation today and among many interesting posts I found this video about what teachers make:

I think getting enthusiastic about learning is something that you really have to work at especially if you're someone who has trouble letting go and making yourself look a little bit silly.  I know it's really worth it though, I've seen faces light up in a classroom where a teacher really gets into telling a story or explaining a concept it makes such a difference!

Enhance the Learning
As the Associate Principal in charge of ICT one of the things I'm constantly thinking about is how the ICT equipment we have in the school is being used.  Tony talked about the need to use ICT to enhance learning and how important it is to have that in our mind when looking at using ICT tools in the classroom.  He also talked about the need to have ICT as part of of our classrooms especially since the children we teach live in a technology rich environment.

So what does this mean for me? What does it mean for the teachers in other classrooms at school?  I think at the moment it means we need to really have a go at a tool before we introduce it to the classroom, which is fairly obvious.  Beyond that though we need to look at what we are using the tool for and how we are asking the students to use the tool.  I'm going to keep thinking on this and will post results later.