There has been a long exchange on the TechLearning Blog page, that began with my Letter from the Principal post, apologizing for failing to prepare children for the 21st century. I posted a second blog on TechLearning yesterday, posing several essential questions behind education reform.
T&L Blogerati, Terry Freedman commented on that post asking
…so what am I, the teacher in the classroom, supposed to actually do?
Here is how I responded at T&L, and I’m offering it here as well.
Thanks for the clarifying question, Terry. Often, my high minded (seems that way some times) ideas need grounding. It’s one thing that my wife is very good at.
What should the classroom teacher be doing now?
- First of all, they should join the conversation, just like Cheryl says. They should start paying very close attention to the world they are teaching our children about and then start talking about it. They should start blogging and reading blogs. I could never adequately describe the learning curve I have ridden over the past 12 months since starting to read blogs, and to participate in the conversation.
- Teachers must start looking for, and inventing, new stories. To much of what we do in our classrooms, curriculum meetings, standards committees, and board rooms, are based on old and outdated stories. Find the new stories and start telling the heck out of them to everyone, at every opportunity.
- Start coming at things sideways.
- We’re still teaching like it’s all our children will ever need to learn. We need to start helping students learn to teach themselves.
- We’re coming out of an age of occupational security. So what’s the upside of less security? More opportunity. What do kids need to know to leverage and even create opportunity.
- Second think literacy. What are the basic skills when information is increasingly networked, digital, and overwhelming, and what are the pencil and paper in that information environment.
- Stop talking about integrating technology into the curriculum, and start talking about integrating the curriculum into an information-driven, technology-rich, rapidly changing world.
- Find and craft new stories and tell them. To your class…”I read yesterday that at any given moment 2% of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP) is in the back of a UPS truck. What do you think we, in our community, put on those trucks — or what do you think we might put on those trucks in the future?”
To the public…”At some point, sooner than we believe, virtually all practical day to day information will be available digitally and through a network, and almost exclusively through digital technology. Anyone without convenient (at hand) access to a networked, digital device and the skills to use that device, may as well not know how to read. We’ve decided how important it is to learn to ready. How about the tech part?”
We need to be inventing new stories, sharing them, and telling them ALL THE TIME.
A great choice of genre and audience for your message David! I really enjoyed the conversation you generated – all very familiar voices in my own experience in Australia. Some of the points made that I would highlight are:
* It’s about learners and learning – most teachers and parents will come on board at this level
* It’s about ALL students
* It’s about the basics – but 21st century basics – call them “new basics”, “new essentials”, “essential literacies” – most people agree the world has changed
* It’s about the whole person – student and teacher – learning has critical social and emotional dimensions
* It’s about agreeing on the fundamental values and purposes of education
* It’s about everyone being involved in the conversation AND the change process – students, parents, educators (at all levels), community…
* It’s about more than ICT – social and cultural change is very broad
* It’s about telling new stories
* It’s about supporting professional conversations AND learning for teachers
* It’s about clarifying the key messages and being positive
* It’s about recognising that change involves risk – professional teachers may prefer not to risk new approaches that may disadvantage their students
* It’s about listening to and respecting everyone’s views
I would add:
* It’s about understanding the process of transformative change – about which much is known… eg Michael Fullan
* It’s about both the short term and the long term – but not too long 🙂
I think recent blog discussion suggesting a “perpetual beta version” of education is spot on. Curriculum (in its bradest sense) needs to be organic – “living documents”.
However at the end of the day you can’t involve everyone. I was involved in a curriculum consultation process with thousands of teachers, students, parents, and members of the community. After several years of staged implementation there were still plenty of people who didn’t really understand why we were doing it – particularly in the community.
The State Department of Education quickly learned the power of the mass media as first stages of reporting the new curriculum started late last year.
Here are links to two television advertisements that were produced to get part of the message across.
http://www.parentinfo.education.tas.gov.au/parentinfo/teaching/els
What should the classroom teacher be doing now?
Many thanks to the person who left this question. Your responses (in addition to the ones above) where very helpful as I am constantly in a state of flux on how to introduce blogging technologies to teachers. I too agree that the changes in the classroom have to do with re-inventing yourself and telling new stories. Joining the conversation is a powerful message and starting point for introducing the read/write web. Thanks again for starting this conversation.
I am amazed as I search on technorati that more classroom teachers are not yet blogging. I wonder if the things that have been made urgent for teachers (paperwork, etc.) have clogged the works and make it difficult for teachers to begin doing things that are truly important but perhaps not as urgent.
This is a great post. I particularly believe in teaching students to become self-teachers. That is one of the cornerstones of my classroom.
I have always done it in some form but I appreciate you helping me put it into words.
I recently gave a mini-inservice over the lunch period on blogs. Afterwards I told those in attendance that there would be a prize for the first personal blog that was emailed to me and there would be two prizes for the first departmental/work blog that was created, or enough so I could see where they were going. Amazingly enough, only 3 people emailed me their blog. 2 were not teaching staff but were “other” professional type staff.
I really think that in order for teachers to take new technologies seriously and not as some “fad” that will soon fade away, we need to rethink our idea of how we now hold school. There need to be some in-depth time for teachers to attend “sessions” with some expectation that there is an “assessment” of showing what you’ve learned in the process. It isn’t something you attend to fall asleep at or get caught up on your e-mail.
During a teachers scheduled contract year, there should be a week’s time frame here and there built in to take in new technologies, have time to experiment with them, and preparation time to input these into curriculum.
Adele, I couldn’t agree with you more. In the blog entry above, I suggest that teachers come at things sideways. It’s my preference to come in through the backdoor, to look at, in my mind, the classroom that I think does appropriately prepare our children for their future, and then look at what makes that classroom possible.
Number one on my list would be four hours of professional planning time every day for every teacher. I know that this sounds outrageous, but just imagine what our classrooms might be like, and what and how children might learn if teachers had four hours to plan each day — rather than planning until 10:00 at night.
Our tendency is to start from where we are, and gage how far we can reasonably expect to get in the next school year: how much we can expect from overworked teachers, over-stressed administrators, anxious citizens, and politicians more interested in tax-relief than quality service to their constituents and their future.
Why not start with the goal and work backwards?
Why not?
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