A Week of #EdJoy

At last week's #sunchat about having fun, I floated the idea of tweeting around the hashtag #edjoy. For the two weeks prior to the chat, I had discussed the need for and meaning of the hashtag with some very insightful people in my PLN. You can read an older blogpost about that here. While there seemed to be unanimous support for getting the hashtag circulating, I still wasn't sure if people would be drawn to it.

Fortunately, my uncertainty proved to be unfounded.

By mid-week, a number of people were using #edjoy to share the classroom experiences that make teaching so incredible and rewarding. Some tweets identified big collaborative moments between students, while others highlighted the smaller, quieter one-to-one experiences.









Regardless of the specific situation referred to in the tweet, one thing was clear: Learning can not happen without a genuine sense of trust and caring. While these feelings get established in a number of ways, foremost among them is the belief that learning becomes meaningful when it becomes deeply personal. And some laughter and fun helps.












On a personal level, this was one of those weeks: long hours, including a night of parent conferences; a lot of grading; and a number of "misses." You know what I am talking about. Those classes where nothing really goes wrong; however, something feels off. Like there's a lack of connection. In any case, I ended a couple of the days in a funk. My wife refers to this as "impending doom." Maybe that's taking it too far. Still, anybody who has spent time in the classroom should know what I mean: a nagging, indefinable suspicion that things could have been better.

But then, each day, as I scanned Twitter, I saw the moments of #edjoy. All I can say is, they truly helped. I look forward to more, and to hopefully getting more educators involved. A sincere thank you to all who contributed ideas this week. I know there are far more than I've included here.

I'll give the final word to one of my favorite tweeps:

My brain and heart got a jolt this week as well. I'm ready for more. How about you?