“Susan Hitt, a secondary English and language arts lead teacher at New Hanover County Public Schools in Wilmington, North Carolina, describes an instance in which her supervisor, the assistant superintendent of instruction had everyone on the instructional team identify one focus point that year to improve instruction. It was to be an undercurrent of the work they did with students, something they would come tack to week after week. While many of her colleagues selected things like reflection, feedback, and positivity, she immediately identified her one thing to be collaboration, with a goal of brining more collaborative opportunities to high school English teachers across the district. 

Hitt says, ‘From my vantage point on the instructional team, I could see all the amazing things each school’s English department was doing, but they were very much on their own island. One school had no idea what the other school was doing.’

She used technology to begin the process of enhancing collaborative opportunities for teachers across the district. She first created a high school English hashtag that district teachers who were already on Twitter could use to highlight what they were doing in their classrooms. She then created a blog as a platform for English teachers to regularly share their unique and impactful strategies and activities with their colleagues. 

In the following weeks, Hitt observed an uptick in in the dialogue teachers were having with each other. More important, however, was the feedback her peers provided indicating they felt more empowered and less isolated now that they had platforms to share ideas with each other. She also points out that these changes took time and that the collaboration was never forced. ‘It has to be organic, and all involved need to be willing to showcase their confidence as well as their insecurities. But once the doors are thrown open and educators are ready to not just share but to listen, the path towards genuine collaboration has been paved and it will surely lead somewhere amazing.’

Reflecting on this experience,  Hitt remarked that ‘collaboration among educators should be as commonplace as that sought-after morning jolt of caffeine to kick off the work day.’

Who would have thought that something as simple as a hashtag and a blog would create so much opportunity for teachers to improve their practices? With social media at their fingertips, teachers can share their work immediately with a wide audience. “