Being social: Increasing productivity

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As I wrap up my reading of the book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew D. Lieberman. I want to write 2 posts in relation to work in schools and how we can help students and teachers tap into our social nature. The first of these 2 posts focuses on the work environment especially in schools. 

I was struck by how in this country we equate job satisfaction with more income as pointed out in the book. I myself am guilty of this way of thinking. However after reading the chapter entitled "The business of social brains" I am inclined to rethink this a bit. We hear phrases like "Money is the route of all evil." or "The best things in life are free" or many others. It turns out these phrases are to a certain extent true as pointed out by numerous studies on economics and job satisfaction and on productivity in the work place. My goal here is not to talk about all these studies an what they show but to focus on my thoughts on how to improve productivity in schools through social endeavors. 

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In the book they cite research that shows as income increases the feeling of social well being stays the same. They also cite research that shows the most effective ways to increase productivity is not to give out more money (it actually decreases it in some cases) but to bring in a social aspect. Help your employees make a real life connection to the work they are doing. As an example they talked about the job of students calling Alumni for donations. What they found was when they brought in a student who was or did benefit directly through Alumni provided scholarships the callers were more productive and motivated to work their callers for money and actually brought in more donations. 

In teaching we get to see this day and and day out with our students. However I believe we can do better. I believe it would be helpful to be able to see how our work impacts families and communities. Some of us get to see that but I think we could do better by attending community events and working with our community leaders to see what events/meetings/ etc. we can attend as teachers. Also I know that we as teachers are feeling overworked and underpaid and don't feel we can sit on another committee or meeting beyond our contract. However there is meaning in accepting that request to sit on a volunteer committee. I have served on a few committee's for my children's school district. While I don't work in the district it has reminded me of the importance of doing so as well as the intrinsic reward/value by doing so. I am not a overly outgoing person and prefer to the the social butterfly on the wall watching others have good time. However the more I have started to include myself I am able to take more satisfaction from the work I do and share the knowledge I have. I think we as teachers and administrators need to focus both on giving teachers opportunities to sit on community boards as well as support that interaction. Also it is important for admin to provide those opportunities and encourage teachers to take advantage of those opportunities not out of requirement but out of helping to fulfill that social need. 

Lastly as schools we need to look at ways of making the work we do during the school day more social. Whether that be time to work together on a cross-curricular project, time to talk with colleagues about what ever comes to mind, time for students to talk while working (possibly more on this in a later post 😃), and time to "break bread" together. The last one is the hardest for me as for reasons I stated above. However, I think the past emphasis on high stakes testing forced us back into silo teaching based on subject areas. You would see math, science, and language arts teachers huddle together in teams to talk about their practice which was OK for their curriculum but not for the overall child. Children need to see how curriculum is social in that it all works together to make one successful.What I am thinking/proposing is taking a page out of the elementary playbook but instead of having 1 teacher teach all subjects you have 4 teachers teach all subjects together in a team teaching concept. I know this may have been or is being tried and I welcome your thoughts/comments on how it is going/working.

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this brings me to my final thought, the importance of communication. I think this is the essence of being social. We often times feel that social media is bane of our existence and ruining our ability to be social. I have found myself totally agreeing this statement until I read this book. I still have my reservations but when you see how we are wired to be social and also put social media in the context of being a tool, it opens up some possibilities. For example 5 years ago I would never have thought of using a tool like email to communicate with my students. It was a barrier that I felt shouldn't be crossed. Along with that I wouldn't imagine being a "friend" on Facebook with my students or tweet with them no matter how much they begged me (again barriers). However now I use email and google classroom (what I call social media for the classroom) to communicate with my students and dare I say it is working out for the positive. With proper instruction on how to both use the tool and respect boundaries social media can be and is a powerful educational tool. 

As always thanks for reading and commenting and remember:

Go Forth and Do Great Things!  

 

Social Media Learning

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As I read the news this week about a girl who went to her prom and was attacked, berated, supported, etc. for the style of dress she chose to where.  I wonder what would be different if we took the time to time to teach social media as part of schools ELA curriculum and not part of what we call digital citizenship.

I know that ELA teachers might disagree with me on this one with the argument of social media is destroying writing. Kids can't write complete sentences and use letters for words etc. While I tend to agree but I also see a different point of view. I have always read, heard, etc. that the English language is a living language

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that is is constantly evolving with new words, phrases, and colloquialisms. Social media is just the next evolution of language. Kids have learned to adapt their writing to fit the medium with which they use to communicate.  Instead of chastising kids for adapting a language we should be learning from as to how they do it and how they develop the rules. However that is not what I want to address here in this post. I would much rather address how students are using social media as a communication tool.

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Social media is very much in it's infancy and I don't think it will ever be out of its infancy with all the new tools and forms of social media coming out. kids are using it as best they know how to share information with each other for good or for bad. I wonder if it was like that when books, writing, music, etc came out as ways of communication. Did we fight it and say they were going to ruin society? Yet we now use them as not only a form of expression but also as a way to communicate information. We also now teach kids how to use music, writing, etc. as a way to express themselves and how to express themselves properly and effectively. Our efforts are used for good and for bad but we still teach them how to use the tools.

The same goes for social media it is used for good and for bad, yet we often times focus on the bad more so than the good. I pose we should focus on the good and learn how to teach it. If it were part of an ELA curriculum we could leverage it to teach grammar and persuasive versus expository writing. We could help mold new spelling rules ass well as combine old ones with the new. Kids could learn how to express themselves in a positive and effective manner rather than trying to figure out through trial and error on their own. Some say that this is better done as part of a digital citizenship unit where we are teaching them how to be good citizens. The problem is that it is out of context and often times pot on the back burner. It is put on the back burner due to the fact that often times in education we put items like ELA, Science, Math, etc. ahead of other subjects because it is tested. I would argue that if we incorporated the use of social media we could capture student interest and teach what is tested and possibly see better results.