"Be REAL" is a gentle reminder from education consultant and author Tara Martin who spoke Monday to 615 area teachers attending the Tiger Teacher Nation Regional Professional Learning Day inservice program at Hays High School.
The Lawrence resident encouraged the teachers to be real — to be relatable, expose their vulnerability, be approachable, learn through life — and to educate from the heart.
"All of these things shape our lives, help us to serve people better, no matter what profession that we're in," Martin noted.
"We live in a real world. But I feel like Photoshop — all of this — is portraying this image that we need to be something that we're not.
"If everyone could just be real and we accepted that for what it was, wouldn't that be a beautiful diverse world where everyone felt that they were enough? How much more would they perform?"
By being real, teachers are also empowering their students to do that themselves, Martin said. "I think the more real teachers are, the better their students perform."
"Our empathy for them grows dramatically when we show a little bit of our vulnerability and we understand that they have a real story behind them as well."
Martin's story, who grew up in southwest Texas, stems from her second grade teacher, Mrs. S. She taught Martin to read and to understand that she could learn.
"Learning really became the gateway to success for me — growing up in high poverty, growing up with parents who didn't graduate, becoming the first generation in my family to become a graduate of anything."
Martin referenced a report by the National Education Association which says a large body of research shows a strong social and emotional foundation helps boost children's learning, academic performance and other positive long-term outcomes.
Along with primary caregivers, teachers can have a major lifelong impact on students.
"I still say Mrs. S changed the trajectory of my thinking," Martin says nearly 40 years later. "She rewired my brain that year that I didn't have to become a statistic."
Instead, Martin became a teacher.
Technology can defy reality, but when deliberately used in the classroom, it can also amplify realness.
Following some back and forth discussion with her then 15-year-old son Caleb, Martin founded #BookSnaps three years ago.
It became a strategy used by teachers worldwide. It's now used in 17 countries and in 25 languages.
#BookSnaps is a way of using the popular phone app Snapchat in the educational setting to create a digital visual representation of learning.
"If we have them use the language that they love — Snapchat or any digital app that lets you edit a visual image — we're peeking into the minds of our learners. They're creating the learning inside their minds digitally to show us.
"You see #BookSnaps all over Twitter and social media and you don't even understand the language but you can tell what they're thinking because of that universal language of images."
Martin is the author of the books "Be REAL: Educate from the Heart" and "Cannonball In," a motivating children's book illustrated by Genesis Kohler. She coaches and serves educational authors as the director of public relations and communication for her publisher DBC Inc.
About 120 teacher paras were among those attending the day-long inservice from USD 489, TMP-Marian and Holy Family Elementary in Hays, and schools in Ellis, Victoria, Palco and Stockton.
Fifty professionals presented multiple breakout sessions focusing on topics ranging from other types of tech integration, parent communication and enhancing student career readiness skills to teacher retention and burnout.
Heather Musil, an instructor of Special Education in Teacher Education at Fort Hays State University's College of Education, represented FHSU on a LEAD team that spent the last four months planning the inservice.
"The January inservices for teachers are very critical because they're halfway through the (academic) year and they need something to motivate them and get them reenergized," Musil said. "They also get a little TLC for themselves as well plus what they can take back into the classroom."
The final sessions of the day provided opportunities for the educators to get together to discuss what they had learned and for collaboration.
Musil, who taught in USD 489 for 18 years, now teaches college students considering education as a career. She says her daughter calls them "the wanna-be teachers."
"I'm teaching them the things I learned in my classroom as well as strategies to help them in their future classrooms."
Musil sees a strong desire in her students to become teachers.
"I believe it's the love of kids that motivates us," she said with a smile.