Who taught you how to use Snapchat? For me, it was 15 high school juniors and seniors who could not believe that their teacher would stop in the middle of a lesson to learn about the newest social media craze.
We were discussing how to properly use different selection tools in Photoshop in my Digital and Interactive Media class, and somehow the conversation turned to Snapchat; a platform I knew absolutely nothing about. Admitting your ignorance about anything to a group of teenagers was one of my greatest fears when I first became a teacher. Luckily, I learned to find the importance of letting them see some of my vulnerabilities from time to time at this point in my career. When they learned that I had just as many insecurities as they did, they saw me as a real person and we both learned better from each other.
It was the Spring of 2013 so Snapchat hadn’t been around forever, but they had been using it every day. When I told them that not only did I not know how to use it, but I also did not truly know what it was, they gasped in disbelief. It felt like that scene in The Sandlot where the kids are talking about Babe Ruth and Smalls asks, “Ya, who is she?” The kids immediately began comparing me to their Grandmother who needed help using the TV remote.
At the drop of a hat, the class was flipped, and I became the student. We spent a couple of minutes deciding the best username for me, and we fell upon BrieseNation. How this developed as the best option I have no idea, but it is still my Snapchat username to this day. Students who never spoke up in my class had come to the front to teach me different ways to use this new tool, and thanks to my excellent teachers, I was a Snapchat expert within 10 minutes.
Now, what would have happened if my Principal had walked in during that time? Would I have freaked out and immediately told the students to put their phones away and tried to act like I was doing something “academic”? In my first year teaching, probably. However, at this point in my career I would have been comfortable enough to explain the situation to my Principal, and she would have trusted that at the end of the day my students would learn the content in my class. Building a rapport with your students is the most important part of a teacher’s job. You can be a world-renowned expert in your content area, but if you cannot connect to students, you will not be an effective teacher.
My students have taught me how to use Snapchat, helped me shop for tennis shoes (we actually had to create a quick Google Form so that they could vote on which pair I should buy), and we once stopped what we were doing so that we could spend an hour discussing Paul Walker’s death and the dangers of street racing. None of those topics were tested, none of them were written into any curriculum, and you won’t find any of them in any TEKS. However, the short time I spent on these activities with my students helped me develop a better relationship with them, that ultimately helped me be a better teacher and them be better students.
Of course, common sense has to come into play here. You cannot tell your Principal that you read online that your students will be more prepared for the English I EOC that you have been tasked with preparing them for, by having them to help you pick out new shoes. Nevertheless, sometimes a spontaneous moment will occur that allows you to build a stronger relationship with your students. When that moment appears, don’t waste it. Don’t take advantage of the situation either. In the end our job is to teach the students, but without a good relationship between the teacher and students, that is not possible.
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