#HFBTweets!

Yet another post for #NaBloPoMo today!! This time it's not necessarily about my classroom, however, it IS about my school community!!

I gave a presentation at our staff meeting yesterday afternoon to encourage our community to engage in the Arlington Public Schools' Twitter initiative. You may view the Prezi I made for that here: Twitter Prezi.

I prefaced the presentation by explaining to my colleagues that the first time I was encouraged to tweet (by my supervising office- @APSArts), I tried and failed several times...because I just found it pointless. I'm sure many of my fellow staff members agreed with that sentiment before my presentation, and some still might.

So, this year I decided I would really put some effort into it and created a school Twitter handle (@mspatricianhfb), and I am happy to say that I FINALLY got a handle on it (handle, hehe). Now I tweet once a day if I can and I do it right from my phone. It's not exactly live tweeting, but I do tweet between classes, so that my Twitter feed is some sort of real-time account of my daily activities.

My tweets have not only been a way to share my kids' activities in music class, but they have also been a reflective teaching tool- a way to really look back at my week and say, "Hey- I did that- and look at those smiles!" Sometimes you just need that as a teacher, and I'm sure you need it in most other professions as well.

SO, I'm proud to announce that many of my colleges did create Twitter handles yesterday, and that we are all trying to engage in a new conversation and try to get it trending on Twitter- #HFBTweets. If you're on "the Twitter" and want to retweet some of our contributions to that conversation, please do!! We want everyone to be able to see the incredible things that we are doing with our students at this school that is hidden in the depths of South Arlington!

I'm excited to say that our Superintendent, Dr. Patrick Murphy (@SuptPKM), even retweeted our Art teacher's first tweet from yesterday (@artHFB)- so we're getting county-wide attention at least! See the tweet below:

In any case, I am excited for our school to be out there in the world of social media and hope to see our conversation grow as the year goes on!

Please comment below if you have a Twitter handle and would like me to follow you- I'll get right on it! :)

Have a wonderful Friday!

~Ms. Patrician