The new school year is underway, and like educators across the country, I have been engaging in my annual dose of professional development (PD) sessions.
Unfortunately, over the years, I’ve found that traditional PD can sometimes feel repetitive, with facilitators covering reviews and strategies teachers have already mastered, and approaches to curricular analysis that often leave much be desired. While well-intentioned, these workshops can miss the mark when they focus too much on compliance rather than creating opportunities for teachers to innovate, develop and refine engaging strategies for today’s classrooms.
Having led and designed PD sessions myself, I know how challenging it is to create experiences that resonate with everyone. But teachers, much like the students we support, crave transformative learning experiences grounded in active inquiry, collaboration and respect for our classroom expertise. When traditional workshops fall short of that standard, educators naturally look elsewhere for inspiration and community.
When I first applied to become a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT), the process felt so much more transformative, not because of what we did, but because it was intentionally designed around teacher personal and professional growth as opposed to compliance. Colleagues in my NBCT cohort not only made me reflect deeply on my personal pedagogy, but also encouraged me to tinker and inquire about how to improve it.
Last September, during a routine webinar, my colleagues and I found ourselves scrolling TikTok on our phones, seeking relatable teacher perspectives, quick classroom hacks and insights from fellow educators.
Unlikely as it may seem, online platforms like Spotify, Substack and TikTok are becoming vibrant spaces for meaningful, bite-sized PD. So much so that this new phenomenon has inspired me to investigate exactly how social media can help teachers connect theory to real classroom practice.
The Generation Gap in Professional Development
Evi Wusk, assistant professor of secondary education at Nebraska Wesleyan University, acknowledges the phenomenon of virtual microlearning among preservice teachers in her recent EdSurge article “What TikTok Is Teaching Future Teachers (That We Aren’t).” In her work with preservice teachers, Wusk notes that more and more, instead of having to wait until they get into the classroom to learn some of the job’s hardest lessons, many preservice students are exposed to teacher personalities and lived experiences on TikTok; they even come to her graduate classes enthusiastically citing brilliant teaching “hacks” they’ve seen on their phone.
Virtual communities like the Science of Reading Classroom have been essential to my professional growth — and to helping my colleagues and students. When I was chosen to coach 30 teachers across my district in implementing a new literacy curriculum, I set out to learn as much theory as I could to help teachers understand why the work we were about to engage in went beyond a simple textbook change, but involved a change of their entire pedagogical approach.
First, I enrolled in a graduate reading specialist program that unfortunately did nothing more than promote outdated practices. When that pursuit fell flat, I started listening to educator podcasts such as “Melissa & Lori Love Literacy” while reading blogs by real teachers and theorists alike on Substack.
Eventually, I found the Goyen Foundation, where a cohort of literacy fellows is chosen each year to deepen and share our understanding of learning science. We often ended the final minutes of each invigorating meeting commiserating over how alone we felt in our schools, and wishing our own communities fostered this kind of collaboration and inquiry that this virtual one did.
In these spaces, through the use of technology, I found like-minded, curious and passionate educators who have taken it upon themselves to improve the state of literacy in the 21st century. These virtual spaces reignited a fire and passion to improve my own practice, which has become increasingly important for me to maintain as a teacher navigating critical changes in the field today.
At one point, it occurred to me that no matter how much knowledge I wanted to pursue, and how much life got in the way, I always ended up bingeing viral teacher humor videos. If this was the viral loop I was stuck in, other teachers were too. So why not bring evidence-based practices and meet teachers where they are?
When I couldn’t find that content readily enough, I decided to create it.
Charting a New Pathway for Professional Learning
Many times before, I have seen teachers who are curious but also have to run out the door right after the bell rings to go to a second job, take care of a family member or drive the kids to soccer practice. It is for those teachers that I started to funnel everything I learned about the science of reading into bite-sized PD opportunities on TikTok, because even in the day-to-day grind, almost all of us find ourselves in a dopamine-infused scroll a few times each day.
When I set up my TikTok channel, Science of Reading Snaps, my goal was to create bite-sized professional development that explicitly connects theory to practice. And that isn’t just a buzzword either; when I say practice, I mean that I actually film myself using the skills, strategies or theory in my own classroom with real students.
Along the way, I have had to sharpen my skills in intentionally connecting the work I do in the classroom to the knowledge I seek out in online communities. For example, I have always included the classic turn-and-talk in my day-to-day teacher toolbox. But only after diving into reading science and talking with colleagues online about the importance of oracy did I realize that verbal reasoning and oral language skills are absolutely key to students building comprehension from early literacy through postgraduate content.
While none of my content is viral, it does make an impact. Over the past year, I have racked up over 100,000 views across 50 videos on TikTok.
What surprised me more than the number of views were the conversations educators had in the comments. I think it’s in our nature as educators to keep building knowledge, and I was thrilled to see that people found value in my content and engaged in a discussion about it.
For many of my videos, I get the familiar comments like “Love this” or “I’ll be doing this regularly.” What I didn’t quite expect was for the comment section to evolve into its own micro-professional learning community. In the comments on my recent morphology matrix video, one teacher shared how they called this strategy “Meet the Relatives,” while another asked what the difference was between a base word and a root word.
From my classroom to theirs and back again, teachers asked questions, shared resources and offered their own knowledge.
Teaching is often an undervalued vocation, but seeing colleagues engage with my content this way was not only validating, but also deeply humbling. Knowing my colleagues in the trenches valued and appreciated my work meant a great deal, because this job isn’t one we can do alone.
Being the Change, One Video at a Time
As teachers, we spend time talking with administrators, asking questions, sharing examples from our own classrooms and discussing new ideas we want to try. The more excited we are about the content we’re learning through these micro-PDs, the more likely the leadership team will see the changes needed.
Change is hard, but I do feel the most important trait an educator can have is a love of learning new concepts and tactics. I am fortunate enough to have the capacity to read, persevere and inquire independently in order to improve myself and my practice — a skill I work to pass on to my students every day, and to teachers through the content I create. I’m also fortunate that technology has become a tool and helpful alternative that teachers can point to for inspiration and motivation to improve their teaching methods and enhance the curriculum.
The internet, social media and the devices in our hands have made it possible to expand our reach and have also allowed me to expand mine through a love and passion for the science of reading.
