Blog Post #5

A personal learning network is a group of people and/or tools that you use to help you grow as an educator. These are extremely important when you start working in the real world. Being a new teacher, you may want to add the more experienced teachers into you PLN so that you can learn from them and they can learn the new techniques from you. Many teachers go into teaching thinking that they know everything but soon realize that they don't. If they have a PLN then they can go to elder teachers for advice on what to do. The same goes for a new teacher coming in who has a better way of teaching a certain topic.
When I go into my school, I think that I will create my PLN by selecting teachers in my particular grade/subject and get to know how they do things and what works for them. Then I would open it up to anyone no matter what they teach because we can all learn something from each other, whether it be curriculum related or even how to handle a situation.
The main perk of knowing so many people who are teachers is that before I even start teaching I have a huge PLN. So far in my PLN I have the teachers whose blogs I have viewed, my professors that I have had so far, and many teachers at many different schools in Mobile, Baldwin, and Washington counties. Many of these teachers are people I talk to on a weekly basis about the classroom. They always are happy to share information or give me advice to help me. I like that the teachers I know personally don't sugar coat anything. They tell me how it is so that I can be prepared and not have a skewed view of what I am getting into, especially being a special education teacher. I have spent much time in different schools and extremely different class setting and I am grateful for being able to experience a wide variety thanks to my wonderful teachers in my PLN!