Introduction

As a professional teacher, we greatly respect your craft, day-to-day, and your commitment to serve the youth. We also respect your mind and its amazing capabilities. As recent research suggests, teachers make on average 1,500 educational decisions per day. This doesn’t even include the personal realities of having such as living in a complex social world.

We are asking you to share a glimpse of what your reality is like.  This is a part of a growing educational movement to share real life scenarios to further our understanding.  We know that teacher training strictly from a textbook leaves first year teachers behind in their understanding of the realities of the profession, and we are trying to lessen the impact of this wake-up call.

We really want to know about the life of a teacher.  This includes any professional or personal challenges or successes or your thoughts in general. Our project is trying to capture the work life balance.  Our intention is to share your blog with future teachers in order to prepare them for the experiences that they may encounter.  We intend to share the professional decision making that you participate in, no matter how small, as well as the social and professional pressures of your day to day, competing interests for your time, celebrations, and criticisms of your experiences as a teacher.   We are hoping to provide interested individuals and classes with some insight into the realities of the teaching profession.  

What better way than with an awesome and fun video diary and blog project! We want this to be as much an opportunity for you to reflect and enjoy, as it is for us to learn from your experiences.

We do not want to tax your time or mental energy with this work. We will provide you with a simple manual on how to accomplish this task. A simple website where you can upload, post, and store your video entries. We will provide you with all the tools you need: a brand new GoPro camera, memory card, and mini-tripod. We hope that you will be able to use the GoPro in the classroom to support any initiatives you want outside of our project.

Using the equipment, we would like you to create a series of video shorts to share with the people!  These clips should be anywhere from 30 seconds to 1 minute, to 5 minute diatribes, whatever you feel comfortable with sharing.  We would like to get a flavor of your experiences throughout the school year. Again, do by shy to share something as simple as, “I wonder where I am going to eat dinner tonight”, or “Oops, I broke a nail in 3rd period”, or get complex into your thoughts about the education system, your classroom, working with your students, or other important professional issues. We ask that you leave any names or identifiable information such as the name of your school or childrens names. And, we would like you to just film yourself and your classroom, but NO NEED TO CAPTURE STUDENTS.