Be More Than a Hashtag

I've been on an off social media since ISTE. One of the things I have seen is more asinine tweets that either take veiled shots at teachers or are just nonsense.

Ugh. I guess the hashtag makes this an important tweet. Pernille has already written an amazing take on this tweet and you should take the time to read it. I have talked with teachers in my building that feel this type of guilt on their own and to have Marzano double down on that guilt is simply reckless. Too many administrators use his words as Bible truth in education. His thoughts are used in evaluations that give teachers anxiety that hurts their overall emotional health and doesn't do any favors for them in the classroom. Being absent from the classroom for too long can cause this type of empty thinking.

When I choose to leave my classroom after teaching 15 years of HS English, I wanted to make sure that the job I took would allow me to still be in the classroom with teachers. I want to be able to co-plan and co-teach. I was able to to do that with MS students and it was amazing. I learned so much about teaching in the MS and how these students think. It is very important to stay connected if I'm going to share thoughts on teaching. It seems to make sense, but we also live in a country where the Secretary of Education has zero educational experience.

Then I saw this tweet in the morning,

This tweet received 26 likes. Similar empty tweets have received hundreds of tweets. Again, is it the hashtag that makes this important? What does this mean? Going all in is a terrible poker strategy. Do you go all in on a bluff? Do you wait until the perfect set of cards to go all in? Are students the cards? If you wait for the perfect had to go all in, are the other classes (previous hands) missing out because you did not feel they were goo enough to go all in? Look at all of the questions that this ridiculous tweet creates. This isn't even the good type of tweet that is supposed to make you think about your practice. I am thinking this is supposed to be some empowering and uplifting tweet. 

This is not the only tweet out there guilty of being hot air. Teachers are starting to push back against the nonsense and let these people know that their tweets are not helping educators, but hurting them. I'm sure they will only address these ideas when they notice book sales starting to dip, but it is important for teachers to expert more from each other. We need to push these people to dive deeper into their thoughts. If they require you to buy their book for continued conversations, then you know where they stand. 

Please do not be afraid to push back against anyone on Twitter that is trying to sell you something are tell you how to be a good teacher. Being a good teacher looks different in every educational environment around the world. Anyone that tells you there is a definitive way to be a good teacher is someone that is not in the classroom or has a very flawed view of what teaching really is. 

To anyone out there that has felt the guilt of what you do as a teacher because of these types of tweets, please know that there is a great community on Twitter that is supportive of the different ways that everyone teachers and just wants every teacher to know that there is room to grow as a professional online that is more that empty tweets, book hashtags, and pretty quotes on sunset backgrounds. 

For those sending this nonsense out there, be more than a hashtag. 

UPDATE:

Dr. Marzano has replied to the criticism of his tweet. Here is the embedded tweet he sent. 

[1/2] The insensitive tweet about teacher influence on student engagement has been removed. There are many external factors that can impact students inside the classroom, and I apologize that the tweet misleadingly did not acknowledge those factors.

— Robert J. Marzano (@robertjmarzano) July 5, 2018

[2/2] As some have inferred, I haven't directly written my tweets for quite some time, but I will moving forward. Again, my apologies for a delayed response to your collective criticism.

— Robert J. Marzano (@robertjmarzano) July 5, 2018

[2 of 2] ...over every students’ level of engagement. My apologies for the inadvertent and insensitive message that was sent.

— Robert J. Marzano (@robertjmarzano) July 5, 2018

It is nice to see that Dr. Marzano has seen how his tweet might be viewed by others, reflected on it, and has decided to take full charge of his twitter account moving forward. I applaud him for doing this and I look forward to see his tweets on education to learn, and maybe push back a little. ;-)

UPDATE 2:

Some people could not let things go, so I felt the need to go on a Twitter rant to fully explain what was missed in this blog post.

Here is 1/10.

I just want to be clear. Pushing people to explain their thoughts they share on Twitter does not make you a hater. Adding a hashtag to something doesn't not add value. Suggesting that people are haters because they want you to dive deeper or explain more is juvenile. 1/?

— Nicholas Provenzano (@thenerdyteacher) July 7, 2018