Persona

Again, I can’t help but compare my experience as an iEducator to my five years of face-to-face teaching. Obviously, there are a lot of similarities, but there are also some differences that threw me for a loop. One of the biggest ones being my persona in my online classroom.

The students face-to-face learned quite quickly that I was a touch sarcastic. After getting to know some of the students, we would often tease one another and play back and forth.  I could teach in a manner that fit my personality and if I wanted to stop the teaching to tell a related side story, I’d go for it.

When a student walked into my face-to-face classroom, they saw a lot of posters, colors, and pictures. I was always trying to keep my room new, inviting, and colorful. I tried to personalize it as well, creating my own posters of some of my favorite quotes and putting up new pictures on my bulletin board that I had taken. I will always remember the last day at the school when my students came into my classroom and saw my posters removed, my pictures removed from the bulletin boards, and my colorful classroom decorations now in white paper boxes. My students slowed down, and looked around my room in awe. Finally, one turns and says, “Mrs. Broton, your classroom is so sad now.”

Online, this is all quite tricky. Everyone knows that it is hard to convey tone through writing, and how in the world are my students supposed to know when I’m being sarcastic?

At first, I was quite reserved in my messages and announcements. I tried to make my tone as obvious as possible, don’t put anything that even had a small chance of being misconstrued, and frankly, I was boring. This is not who I am, but I wanted to make sure that I remained professional.

As I have become more comfortable with my new teaching situation, I have found my persona coming out more and more. Every week, I post a little blurb about my life in on my weekly announcements to let the students know what is going on in my life. I also had a few pictures that I have taken over the last week to give them a glimpse into my ever-exciting life. And, of course, I use Bitmojis like crazy on my announcements! What online teacher doesn’t!?

I noticed just within the last few weeks that I have been using a bit more humor and sarcasm in announcements. The sarcasm isn’t directed towards my students, but the topic at hand. For example, “let’s face it, commas are evil little things.” This is more of my writing style and I think, gives the students a glimpse into what my personality is like.

I have also been making a solid effort to use memes more. Something that I never really thought I would do in education! There are so many out there that are funny, yet appropriate for school. I recently made a document about paragraph structure and put this at the end of it:

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So, there you have it. At this point, I am hoping you can relate to this meme:

But if you try writing in this format and find yourself relating to this meme more, please don’t hesitate to ask me for help:

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When I started this new adventure, I was sure that my five years of face-to-face teaching experience was going to help me; however, I almost feel like I am starting from scratch! As I am slowly adjusting and getting more comfortable, I think my teaching persona is becoming more apparent online. In the meantime, I will continue to keep working on it and picking up as many tips from my colleagues as I can!