Day 18: Pump Up The Volume #AprilBlogADay Challenge

Prompt 18: What's small step are you willing to take to elevate the profession?

I suspect that what Chris meant when choosing the word "elevate" was about bringing the profession to a new level, to rise up.  I quickly looked up the definition of elevate and read: To increase the amplitude, intensity, or volume of.  The first thing that came into my mind was, I need to pump up the volume around my craft.  And of course, being a woman of a certain age, this is what popped into my head next: 

For those of you not familiar with the 1990 movie, Christian Slater (swoon!) runs a pirate radio station that earns a cult following amongst his peers.  At the time it was a lesson in free speech and chaos and continuing to cement Slater as my dream husband for many years to follow.

There has been so much rhetoric, both positive and negative about teachers, unions, charter and public schools over the last few years and its place in social media is achieving a fever pitch now especially around opting out of state tests. My Twitter feed is regularly flooded with tweets that are highly political, teaching activists pumping up the volume on what they think is important.  I love that colleagues feel passionately about this work and are willing to elevate knowledge of the interwebs to shed light on things that are happening in and around education.

I however have never been especially political.  While I do feel strongly about many things, for example, I am NOT against the common core, but I do have some very specific feelings and thinking about where it has gone wrong, I am not 100% comfortable flooding social media with my platform.  I think there are better ways for me to elevate the volume on what impacts teachers and what I think is important.  For me, this small step towards elevation and increasing the volume and rhetoric around my profession is going to be through blogging.  While I may not get the same coverage and dissemination that others get, I know many of you are reading, and hearing and sharing.  

I will keep talking about what I have experienced, what I think is important, and working to elevate my craft every day through doing so.