Interested in using Swivl solutions in your organization but lacking budget or unsure if our tools qualify for your existing federal program funds? In this article, you will find funding opportunities to acquire our reflective tools. 

Title I, II, and IV

Regular funding sources available annually include federal Title programs. All of these programs have deadlines that vary state by state, district by district, so it’s important to check with your district or local agency to learn when yours are. Title I provides financial assistance to districts and local education agencies with high percentages of children from low-income families to ensure all children regardless of means have access to a high quality education. Title II works with states and local education agencies and is intended to support teachers, principals, and other school leaders to improve the overall quality of instruction. Title III supports language instruction programs for English Learners and immigrant students, helping districts build the resources and structures needed for ELs to achieve English proficiency alongside their peers. And finally, Title IV aims to provide all students access to a “well-rounded education” consisting of improvement to school conditions, use of technology, and digital literacy.

Title I

Title I provides financial assistance to districts and local education agencies with high percentages of children from low-income families to ensure all children, regardless of means, have access to a high quality education. Swivl is a strong Title I investment because its tools are designed to close gaps, not widen them. AI-generated formative assessment gives teachers faster, clearer insight into student progress — so they can direct their time and energy toward the students who need the most support. Hardware enables effective observations and small group instruction without requiring additional co-teachers or support staff to be scheduled in, making differentiated support more accessible even in under-resourced schools. And because Swivl’s solutions work across web, mobile, and standalone hardware, they’re a flexible fit for a wide range of school environments and learner needs.

Title II

Title II works with states and local education agencies to support teachers, principals, and other school leaders in improving the overall quality of instruction. Swivl directly serves this mission: data generated by M2, Swivl Robot, and Reflectivity helps teachers identify shifts in their own practice quickly, enabling them to self-serve their professional development rather than waiting on formal coaching cycles. For school leaders, admin dashboards provide visibility into instructional trends across classrooms, making it easier to target support, align professional learning, and narrow gaps in mentorship and coaching resources. Swivl also offers personalized onboarding and ongoing training, so teachers build genuine fluency with the tools — not just surface-level adoption.

Title III

Title III supports language instruction programs for English Learners and immigrant students, providing districts with funds to help ELs achieve English proficiency and meet the same academic standards as their peers. M2 is a natural fit for Title III investment: in the classroom, it gives teachers real-time and post-lesson feedback on their instruction while offering on-demand supports like translations, connections, and in-ear explanations for multiple learners simultaneously — reducing the need to restructure schedules or pull students from instruction for additional support. Because M2 seamlessly facilitates whole-class and small group instruction, ELs can participate fully alongside their peers rather than being singled out, fostering the kind of collaboration, mutual understanding, and inclusive classroom culture that Title III aims to build. As students engage in verbal reflection assignments, the repeated practice of speaking and recording their thinking gives ELs a low-stakes way to build pronunciation and oral fluency over time — gains that compound with daily use. Those same reflections give educators ongoing, low-lift evidence of student understanding, making it easier to monitor progress and deliver targeted support. At the program level, administrators can use the dashboard to define and align values, methods, and curriculum across the organization, ensuring implementation stays consistent with Title III intent from classroom to district.

Title IV

Title IV aims to provide all students access to a well-rounded education through improvement to school conditions, expanded use of technology, and stronger digital literacy. Swivl’s suite of tools addresses all three: combining AI, hardware, and software to create richer learning experiences across subjects and settings, both in and outside the classroom. For school climate and conditions, Swivl solutions give administrators and counselors a proactive tool for promoting positive behavior — offering students structured ways to check in, reduce anxiety, and build mindfulness as part of their daily routine. The tools are customizable for every type of learner and available across web, mobile, and standalone hardware platforms, making them a scalable investment for districts looking to modernize instruction without creating new dependencies on screens or fragile tech stacks.

USDA rural development

A lesser known grant program for rural districts through USDA’s Rural Development department ensures rural educators and students have equitable access to federal programs in their regions. This grant program requires a 15% match and eligible purchases include: audio, video, and interactive video equipment, hardware, software, and instructional tools for distance education. The deadline to apply occurs annually, typically in April, and funds can be exercised for up to three years.

Summary: How Swivl qualifies

Multi-format availability — Standalone hardware, web, and mobile options fit a wide variety of school environments

MTSS & formative assessment — Research-backed metacognitive and cognitive strategies built in across student and teacher workflows

Flexible instruction — Hardware supports whole and small group instruction without adding staff or restructuring schedules

English Learner support — On-demand translations, in-ear explanations, and verbal reflection practice build language proficiency and classroom inclusion without pulling students from instruction

Professional development — Teachers can self-serve their own PD, reducing total dependence on coaching and mentorship resources

PBIS — Proactive tools for administrators and counselors to support positive behavior, check-ins, and student wellness

Customizable for all learners — Adaptable for every learner type, used in a wide range of in- and out-of-classroom activities

Training & support included — Personalized onboarding ensures teachers derive real, lasting value from the tools

To experience Swivl’s suite of offerings before committing your funds, or gain assistance in finding a state or local grant program that your organization qualifies for, get in touch with us for a free consultation and an opportunity to try our solutions before you buy.

The post Where to find funding for Swivl solutions appeared first on Swivl.

Reflectivity’s latest release helps teachers become more adaptable by socializing reflection. 

Socializing reflection means sharing your learning process in a community of colleagues with similar challenges and goals. 

When you share your work with colleagues and exchange ideas about skills you’re building, you gain the insights and feedback needed to adapt to any challenge. This leads to stronger connections, new skills, and an even higher order of thinking. 

This release makes that process easier and more powerful than ever.

Explore colleagues’ learning

We noticed that users love seeing a “zoomed out” view of their Skill communities because it gives a birds-eye view of the reflection happening in their organization.

Now, the My Skills, Most Active, and New tabs keep you focused on the activity happening in your organization’s Skill communities. You’ll always know where colleagues are gathering to make progress on hard problems, and where new ideas are emerging about the latest challenges the organization faces.

When time is limited, it only takes a few moments to browse a Skill community, encourage colleagues, or get inspired by their reflections.

Socialize reflection at every step

Top-down professional learning often makes it difficult for teachers to connect around common challenges, and exchange ideas about shared goals.

Now, Reflectivity gives you a visual reminder that you’re part of a community of reflective educators, sharing what’s working in real time. We’ve done this by moving all interactions and reflections to the right panel, so you stay in the community as you work.

Additionally, each step of the skill-building process is now an act of reflection shared in your Skill community. These steps include joining a new Skill community, making plans, and engaging in deeper written or video reflections. Your colleagues can encourage you at each step with a Boost, or leave a comment to start a discussion.

When your organization socializes reflection inside a Skill community, learning happens with the support of others.

Adaptable educators reflect together 

Teachers face more change, at a faster pace, than ever before. This is a modern problem that requires a modern solution. Traditional, top-down professional learning moves too slow to keep up. 

Instead, teachers need the freedom to explore many solutions for challenges they face. And they need a dynamic community where they can exchange ideas and feedback by socializing reflection. 

Reflectivity’s latest release makes this new vision of professional learning possible. Imagine what it’d look like if your organization became a community of adaptable educators reflecting together.

The post Socialize reflection in your organization with Reflectivity appeared first on Swivl.

In particular, Reflectivity now helps innovative educators explore how to use AI in their instruction, and share what’s working across their organization.

A new way to approach PD

One major update in this release is the introduction of Skills. 

Previously, teachers used Reflectivity to explore Topics. But we’ve heard that Topics can be a limiting term. Topics are broad, and bring to mind ideas. While ideas are a valuable starting point, teachers grow through taking action. 

Skills describe the solutions teachers are working on in their classrooms. There can be many Skills under one Topic. For example, the Topic Classroom Management includes Skills like Giving Instructions and Setting Expectations.

Teachers view Topics and Skills on the Inspiration board (previously the Popular board).

Discover new solutions

The Inspiration board is where teachers go to discover Skills to address their needs. By sharing and considering many solutions at once, teachers learn and adapt faster. This approach departs from the typical top-down approach to professional learning.

By filtering the Inspiration board, teachers can view Skills categorized by Topic. Right now, AI is a Topic that calls for teachers to adapt like never before. With this in mind, teachers will see 20-30 AI Skills on their Inspiration board when they first login.

Beyond AI, teachers can view or add Skills for Literacy, Classroom Management, and more. 

Find motivation and connect

Once teachers get inspired to explore new skills, they can head to the Activity board. This is where they find motivation to make progress and connect with colleagues.

The Activity board shows updates about their colleagues’ work along with their own, which serves two purposes. 

Seeing colleagues take action can motivate teachers to do their own work. Additionally, these updates can spark connections between teachers with shared interests. 

As teachers try new methods and share what works, solutions spread across the organization.

Adapt to any change

Reflectivity’s latest updates help teachers find motivation, connect with colleagues and build skills. It’s all aimed at growing and adapting to changes like the impact of AI.

For leaders, Reflectivity helps staff pursue many solutions to new challenges that often emerge and shift rapidly. When leaders provide a place to try new ideas, move fast, and learn together, teachers can adapt to any change. 

The post Explore Reflectivity’s new tools to help teachers adapt to AI appeared first on Swivl.

After working with PD and coaching programs for over a decade, we’ve seen the power of collaboration. Whether it’s a PLC or conversation during prep, there’s magic in exploring ideas together.

But collaboration is often limited by location and schedule. Without the time and place, educators miss opportunities to learn from each other.

Today’s release addresses this challenge. We’re giving teachers a look into each other’s work, making it easier to connect around shared topics. 

Build skills and boost motivation – together

Each topic in Reflectivity is now a community. In topic communities, you can see updates about the work your colleagues are doing.

Topic communities are where educators can connect with colleagues down the hall or on the other side of town. They’re where educators gather to explore new solutions to shared challenges. 

By seeing others’ progress, you’ll feel more inspired to take your own next steps.

A familiar interface with new possibilities

You can stay connected with your topic communities in two familiar ways. 

1. Filter the Community board (previously the Advancing board) by topics you’ve joined. 

This gives you a quick way to see progress your colleagues have made on the topics you care about. You can then encourage those colleagues with a boost.

2. You can view detailed activity about any topic. 

Sometimes you want a more granular look at the work your colleagues are doing. For example, you may want to read all reflections written by colleagues about a topic.

Making space for radical collaboration

In an age of change powered by AI, top-down PD no longer works. 

As Swivl CEO Brian Lamb recently wrote,“professional development needs to look less like traditional training and a heck of a lot more like creative design projects.“

Reflectivity aims to inspire the radical collaboration that makes the design process effective. Through this approach, educators can build connections, learn skills, and adapt to any challenge.

If you are an existing Reflectivity user, explore these new features on web and mobile. You can also read more about Reflectivity here.

If you don’t have access to Reflectivity, say hello to Reflectivity Kits! Reflectivity Kits are a fun, social way to reflect together and build upon each other’s energy during an event.

Educators around the country use Reflectivity Kits to capture learnings during PD Days, new teacher trainings, Ed Camps, summer sessions, cross-curricular PLCs, district wide conferences, and to help set professional learning goals.

The post Reflectivity’s latest update helps teachers build skills together appeared first on Swivl.

Our previous releases have introduced features that help educators gain more energy for their work, and have a better reflection experience, both on their own and with colleagues.

As we listen to feedback, a few ideas come up over and over. Two of the words we hear most often are connection and collaboration. So we’re improving how users connect using Reflectivity.

Today’s update includes three new features: the advancing board, boosts, and notifications. These features help users connect with others in their organization, leading to deeper, more frequent collaboration and a stronger sense of community.

Get inspired by progress in your community

In many schools, it is not easy for teachers to see how colleagues are making gains in their practice. To solve this, we’ve built the advancing Board to let users see updates from others when they make progress on the topics that matter to them.

We’ve designed the advancing board to be inspiring and serendipitous. A quick look can give teachers an idea for a topic to work on, or a colleague to strike up a conversation with.

When users see colleagues they want to support, they can give them a boost.

Connect with colleagues by giving them a boost

Encouragement from others goes a long way towards motivating teachers and helping them feel connected to their colleagues. This is why we’ve added boosts to Reflectivity.

Boosts are small encouragements that you give to other users when they make progress on their work. You can boost other users from the advancing board, which displays recent activity by colleagues who need a boost. You can see updates your colleagues have made, and you can click boost to give them encouragement. Your colleagues will see when you’ve boosted them in their notifications. 

Boosts gives colleagues a fun and easy way to reward each other for making progress on their path to growth.

See the latest updates on your work with others

To help users stay up to date on how they are connecting and collaborating with colleagues, Reflectivity now includes notifications.

• Users will see notifications when a colleague:
• Boosts their work from the advancing board (mobile + web)
• Shares reflections or video with them (web only)
• Adds a comment to a discussion you’re a part of (web only)

Notifications encourage collaboration by making it easy to see when colleagues have shared their work or interacted with your work. It also energizes users by letting them know when you’ve received a boost. 

Grade level teams, PLCs, new teacher cohorts and other teacher groups can keep up with each other’s progress, encourage each other, and reflect together when all of their updates are collected in one place.

We believe that these new features will help users feel more engaged and connected with their colleagues. By using boosts, the advancing board, and notifications, teachers can energize each other, collaborate on their goals, and build a sense of community around their practice.

The post Reflectivity’s new updates boost connection and collaboration in your organization appeared first on Swivl.

Ask teachers if they reflect, and nearly 100% will say yes.

For many, this reflection happens through an informal web of internal dialogue, sticky notes, and casual conversations.

But when professional learning initiatives ask (or require) teachers to reflect, the external pressure can make the task feel daunting.

• Where should I start? 
• What should I reflect on?
• Should I discuss my strengths? Weaknesses? Both? 
• How in depth should I go?

The stress of how to reflect can outweigh the benefits of the act and reduce its value.

Fortunately, Swivl has built Reflectivity to offer teachers a flexible answer to the questions above.

Reflectivity (formerly Swivl Teams) makes reflection a simple yet engaging way to share ideas and get feedback. The reflection experience in Reflectivity is inspired by the 4Fs Framework, developed by Dr. Roger Greenaway.

Because Reflectivity’s reflection experience includes both flexibility and structure, teachers gain the autonomy and support needed for a successful reflection routine.

Fact:

What happened?

Findings:

What did you realize?

Feelings:

How did it make you feel?

Future:

What are next steps?

The 4Fs are built in to Reflectivity to help you reflect with purpose

Each step of the 4Fs is integrated into the design of Reflectivity’s reflection experience. First, teachers can identify their feelings by selecting a word that best matches their current state. Then, they can then dig deeper into the facts of their recent experiences, and their findings about those events. Lastly, teachers can make a plan for the next step in the future of their reflection process.

Fact:

What Happened?

What exactly happened? What were all the steps you saw or remember happening, in order. Do not think about the emotions or the behaviors.

Findings:

What Did You Realize?

Are you able to make any conclusions from the event that you reflected on? What were the cause and effect moments?

Feelings:

How Did You Feel?

Now is the time to think about your emotions. Did your emotions play any role, positive or negative, into the event? Did your emotions indicate to you that something you planned should have changed?

Future:

What are your plans for next steps?

Based on what you learned from noticing what happened, some conclusions you made, and how you felt throughout the whole process, how can you either recreate or improve what was done and reflected on?

The post Reflect with Purpose with the 4Fs appeared first on Swivl.

Over a decade, we’ve supported thousands of school initiatives, impacting 100,000+ teachers. 

Through it all, we’ve seen two challenges deter individual and organizational growth. 

First, educators are often asked to absorb too many ideas from top-down initiatives. In response, they deflect these new ideas, i.e. block them out. It’s a rational decision to conserve energy for their daily work. 

Second, bold exploration of new ideas often remains siloed, not shared across organizations.

On the other hand, magic happens when educators can identify and work on topics they care about. Focus and ownership energize teachers to face hard problems. When schools help colleagues learn from each others’ work, the effect is even greater. 

But teachers, coaches, and administrators know that this is a resource-intensive logistical nightmare. Until now.

Along with a new name, Reflectivity brings an exciting expansion to what we’ve already built with our hardware and software, but addresses the new problems we see educators face.

Reflectivity brings focus and clarity to educators’ work

Reflectivity includes all of our existing software’s features for deep written and video-based reflection. However, we’ve added a simple, energizing new way for educators to bring meta-cognition to their work. This process starts with educators identifying the Topic they’re working on, and describing their State. 

Why Topic and State? Reflection is powerful and necessary for professional growth. Video reflection, especially paired with coaching, may be its most effective form. But this deeper form of reflection is too rare to lead to improvement. 

Starting with reflection in its simplest form addresses this problem. 

With a few clicks, teachers gain clarity by identifying where they want to put their energy. When priorities or feelings change, updating Topics and States takes a minute or less. With more awareness brought to the daily work, reflecting more deeply becomes less daunting.

Educators share their topics with their organization, creating the energizing effect of Reflectivity Boards. This is the biggest and most impactful experience we are introducing.

Reflectivity Boards energize and inspire your organization

Reflectivity Boards give educators energy through a real-time, dynamic display of what your colleagues are working on. 

There are two Reflectivity Boards, each with its own purpose:

• New: Topics colleagues have recently added, i.e. started working on
• Popular: Topics that – you guessed it – are worked on by the most people in the organization

Reflectivity Boards give educators a view into how topics are developing in their organization. It is a visual rendering of where colleagues are putting their energy and improving their practice. 

By viewing the Boards frequently, educators can build excitement about the topics they may want to work on, and can discover new topics to explore on their own or with colleagues. Soon, the Reflectivity Boards will help educators connect with like-minded colleagues to collaborate and explore deeper thinking on a topic. 

Tools for deeper, more purposeful reflection

After educators have added topics and begun working on them, they can continue to reflect in ways that grow deeper over time.

• Refining Topics: Maybe it’s time to leave a topic behind in place of a new one that is more relevant to an educator’s circumstances. A topic can quickly be moved to the Backlog, where it is saved and can be reactivated later with just a click. 
• Written Reflection: After a lesson, conversation, or other learning experience, educators can reflect in writing to capture their thinking about a topic.
• Video Evidence: As part of a coaching program or to deepen one’s own reflections, educators can record or upload video evidence using our existing hardware and software tools.

We see many possibilities for expanding how educators and administrators interact with these reflections. Imagine giving educators a view into the deeper work happening on a given topic across their organization? What if administrators and coaches could have a real-time understanding of the topics their teachers needed the most support on, or were most excited to work on? This, and more, is what we’re excited to explore.

Experience Reflectivity in your organization

Adopting the name Reflectivity signals a renewed commitment to our identity as a reflective tools company focused on solving education’s most pressing problems. 

We’re excited to see how educators use Reflectivity to gain increased focus, motivation, and collaboration in their work by exchanging ideas and sharing their energy. And they can do it all while continuing to engage in deep video and written reflection when the time is right.

The post Come for the Energy, Stay for the Growth: Teams Is Now Reflectivity appeared first on Swivl.

Helping educators reflect on what they were learning during each conference had a surprising impact

At Swivl, we create tools that help educators build reflective practices. To say we think a lot about reflection is an understatement. Reflection drives everything we do. It should not come as a surprise that as we were preparing to attend FETC and TCEA we began by reflecting on all of the events we have attended over the past 12 years.

While reflecting, we had two realizations:

1. There is an abundance of learning happening at education conferences
2. There isn’t a lot of deep reflection happening at education conferences

The lack of time to reflect during the conferences is significant. The best way to absorb new information—learn and grow—is to reflect on it. Do I have enough information to implement what I’m learning in my classroom/school/district? Can I see myself using the new strategy I learned in this session with my students/teachers?

Without taking the time to reflect, thinking processes aren’t complete.

With these realizations at the forefront of our planning, we decided to create a booth experience that helped to complete educators’ thinking processes. We wanted to see if we could accelerate the learning and growth of the whole education industry.

And with that, #reflectivity was born.

#reflectivity is giving educators, coaches, and administrators the chance to think about what they’re learning. It prepares them to go back and try what they’re learning instantly, instead of having to go back and do their own thinking.

Technology Coach

What topic has caught your attention?

Our experiences, both in creating reflective tools and on exhibit hall floors, have taught us that the key to progressing an educator’s thinking is to keep things simple. Really simple.

Keeping that in mind, we designed the in-booth experience around the simplest form of reflection, answering one question in as few words as possible. We landed on the question: What topic has caught your attention?

When educators stopped by the booth, they could see the question, stop and think, then write their answer on a sticky note to add to the booth’s backdrop, the #reflectivity Board. 

To help progress the educators’ thinking beyond identifying topics, we designed the #reflectivity Board to include an Action-Orientation Line. This Action-Orientation Line comprised two sentiments: 

1. Taking Note: Needing to gather more information before feeling confident to try the topic in a classroom or with teachers
2. Ready to Try: Feeling confident to immediately implement the topic in a classroom or with teachers after the conference

Over the course of both events, we talked to over 1000 educators—teachers, coaches, directors, principals, and administrators. As we synthesized our experience at both events with all of the topics educators added to the #reflectivity Board, we began to see the impact of #reflectivity.

A surprising impact

Before the events, we were hopeful that educators would enjoy participating in a reflective exercise. What we did not anticipate was how energizing the activity would be for everyone who participated.

During each conference we saw #reflectivity energize educators in three main ways:

1. They were excited to share what they were learning about
2. They gained clarity as they identified where they were on the Action-Orientation Line
3. As they read other educators’ answers, they were inspired to learn about other topics

I enjoyed being able to read other people’s thoughts. It gave me an opportunity to reflect on ideas that I felt the same about, and helped me realize things I can take back to my campus as well.

Library Media Specialist

Our conversations with educators after they participated in the #reflectivity exercise showed us how valuable the information captured on a #reflectivity Board is. Teachers felt excited to share what they were thinking with others—it gave them a voice and built a sense of community. Instructional Coaches viewed #reflectivity as a formative assessment to help them gain insights to inform their professional learning practices. Administrators saw the value of disaggregating the data from veteran and new teachers to find common topics to help with PD plans.

And those are only a small sampling of the types of conversations we had with educators about how they could use the data in their classrooms, schools, or districts.

The #reflectivity Board data

After the conference we segmented the data from the sticky notes collected at each of the events into three boards:

1. New Topics by Day. This board shows when topics first appeared on the #reflectivity Board.
2. Action-Orientation Topics. For each of the topics on the #reflectivity Board, we assigned them a number (1 = Taking Note, 5 = Ready to Try) based on where they were located on the Action-Orientation line. This board represents the average Action-Orientation score for each of the topics.
3. Popular Topics. This board shows which topics were the most mentioned topics on the #reflectivity Board.

As we synthesized the data, we continued to see the value that this data can have for the education industry. Let’s use Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an example topic.

At FETC, AI was the most mentioned topic on the #reflectivity Board. AI first appeared on the Board on the first day of FETC, before the exhibit hall opened! At the end of the conference, AI had an average Action-Orientation score of 2—the majority of educators who picked AI as their topic were still gathering information and didn’t feel prepared enough to try AI in their classrooms yet.

At TCEA, AI was the second most mentioned topic on the #reflectivity Board. AI first appeared on the Board on the first day of TCEA, before the exhibit hall opened. At the end of the conference, AI had an average Action-Orientation score of 3—there was a healthy mix of people who were Taking Note of AI and who were Ready to Try.

For teachers, this data is an indicator that advances in AI are impacting the classroom rapidly. AI is a topic to become knowledgeable about and to explore if there are ways to incorporate AI in their classroom.

For admins, not only is this data an indicator that advances in AI are impacting the classroom rapidly, it’s also an indicator to allocate resources toward this topic. For example, helping teachers understand the pros and cons of AI in the classroom, providing strategies and resources to help students to become better digital citizens, and giving teachers the opportunity to explore AI together.

As you review the information in the charts below, think about how you could use data like this to energize your classroom, school, or district.

#reflectivity at FETC

#reflectivity at TCEA

Bringing #reflectivity to classrooms and schools

The enthusiasm and energy we experienced at FETC and TCEA led us to build a product—called Reflectivity—to create a similar experience in schools and districts on a day-to-day basis.

If you’re interested in trialing Reflectivity in your school or district, let’s talk! Email us at success@swivl.com.

The post Supporting Educators’ Thinking Processes at FETC and TCEA with #reflectivity appeared first on Swivl.

Over the past few years, educators have absorbed countless new ideas, and they’ve had just as many demands placed on their energy.  

In response, many have reacted by returning to the status quo, seeking stability and comfort. The theory of a pandemic-fueled transformation in K12 education overlooked the energy required for such a change.

At the same time, there are countless changes happening in the world outside of schools and for the students inside them. Technology, culture, demographics and more are all rapidly shifting. To prepare today’s students to succeed in tomorrow’s world, yesterday’s methods won’t all apply. 

The result: a group of professionals facing challenges requiring adaptation, but many lacking the energy needed for such a change, at little to no fault of their own.

Stop Deflecting. Start Reflecting and Absorbing.

Deflection is the word we’ve been using at Swivl to describe this situation.

Deflection is when educators block out new ideas because they lack the energy to work with them. Much of this deflection is a response to top-down ideas and initiatives. But not all.

There are individuals and groups within organizations that have transformative ideas, and the energy to implement them. These people have the potential to energize an organization from within. However, these educators too often also find their ideas deflected by others.

How can this situation be addressed? Reflection and Absorption.

To absorb another’s work is to learn about it, grapple with it, and maybe even apply another’s ideas in your own work. 

Organizations must empower educators to regularly Reflect their ideas and energy outwards to their colleagues. At the same time, they need a place and a process for those colleagues to Absorb, or work with, the ideas reflected by others. To absorb another’s work is to learn about it, grapple with it, and maybe even apply the ideas from that work to your own practice. 

Educators almost unanimously value reflection – but too often the energy generated by their reflections goes unshared, or ends up deflected by others.

Reflection paired with absorption is a catalyst for energy that individuals and organizations need to grow.

Energizing Your Organization

To be a source of energy, reflection must begin as a simple act. 

We’ve helped thousands of educators reflect in a deep way, using video to record their practice and examine it, often with the help of a coach. We still believe in this process, and we make industry-leading hardware and software to help you do it.

However, making reflection frequent requires distilling it to its essence. 

The essence of reflection begins with a pause. You take stock of where your energy is going, and what your energy level is. When you share this by telling others what you’re working on, and how you’re feeling about it, you’re adding energy to your organization that colleagues can absorb.

The essence of reflection begins with a pause. You take stock of where your energy is going, and what your energy level is.

From there, you can go deeper on your own, or collaborate with others. Either about your work, or about theirs. This is the start of more collaborative working relationships amongst colleagues. For leaders, this is the start of better decision making and more-informed support of those you lead.

With more energy, awareness and support, everyone is more receptive when legitimate needs to grow and adapt are presented.

Because they know there is a system in place for them to make sense of the change, and to get the energy and ideas required to make the change.

The post Reflection Is Energizing When Paired with Absorption appeared first on Swivl.

We don’t often aim for easy.

Easy workouts won’t make you stronger, and easy books won’t make you smarter. Then why aim to make reflection easy?

While it’s true that work must get harder if we’re going to get better, the first step is making sure the work happens on a regular basis. In other words, before you raise the intensity, you need to have consistency.

This is why reflection must be easy – at first. So it can become a routine.

Floss one tooth

Dr. BJ Fogg, Stanford psychology researcher, uses the phrase “floss one tooth” to explain how to make a habit stick. The secret is to make it easy, laughably so.

Don’t try to build the habit of flossing all of your teeth, he says. Instead, commit to the tiny habit of flossing one tooth.

When your goal is so small the brain can’t say no, you build momentum, and eventually a habit that’s part of your routine.

The reflection habit

Over the past few months, we’ve been working on tools that help teachers build the foundational habit for professional growth: a reflection routine.

While we’re still early, we’re iterating fast and noticing a few factors that make reflection easier for teachers, and therefore encourage them to do it.

We’re gradually tuning our approach to make reflection attractive for teachers. We’ve also cut away things that might get in the way of making reflection a habit.

Simple

Through our decade-plus working with schools on video PD projects, we learned that the power of video comes with some complexity, too. There’s hardware to set up, self-consciousness to overcome, and files to manage.

Our belief in video is still strong. But now we’re simplifying the process, so reflection happens much more often.

Consistent

We believe that reflection should follow a consistent format, and within some reasonable variance, a consistent schedule. The fewer decisions that need to be made about the work, the more energy there is to focus on the work.

A consistent reflection practice makes it easier to see progress and identify the need for adjustments.

Connected

A teacher walks into school, enters their classroom, and often works without any other adults. On busy days, a teacher may only exchange passing words with colleagues.

However, teachers crave and need meaningful professional collaboration. Part of the approach to reflection we’re developing is aimed at breaking down silos and helping to facilitate this kind of collaboration.

A hopeful data point we’ve seen is that teachers are eager to respond to reflection prompts we share on social media. When talking with or getting feedback from like-minded educators, teachers are eager to do the intellectual work of reflection in a connected environment.

We’re continuing to build ways to make reflection connected into Sessions, part of Teams by Swivl. (Now known as Reflectivity.)

To start, make it Positive

Most recently, we’ve stumbled on a small intermediate step towards making reflection a habit. That step is make it Positive, i.e. share a win.

Both in Sessions and our public reflection conversations happening through #reflectED, teachers prefer to first engage by sharing a recent positive event. This makes sense because sharing a reflection of this kind is safer.

After a positive experience is shared and respectfully received, both parties gain a bit of trust in each other that can be built upon for deeper reflection and growth.

What if we make professional growth inevitable?

If you never go beyond flossing one tooth, eventually you’ll get cavities. If you never go beyond sharing recent teaching wins, you’ll leave most of your growth on the table.

But in both cases, the same principle holds true. After you build a habit, making progress gets easier.

When reflection becomes a habit, professional growth becomes inevitable.

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