This is a bit a vent but I feel as if there are many people (including my father) that are in the same place. My struggles began when I first started my gap year and found the thing I had missed so much the past three years... free time:) I'd missed out on a lot of really cool technology and resources available to educators and life long learners (personally I believe these two go hand in hand). It started with a recommendation from my friend Jenny. I had taught with Jenny for a few years in Brooklyn and when I had talked to her about looking into integrating more technology into my instruction she turned me on to EdSurge. It's a great resource but (T.A. - Stands for teacher appropriate) Good Lord... there was so much stuff. This little newsletter that I was sent twice a week took me over three hours to get through. The first hour was awesome. I clicked on the links and read about more edtech companies, was fascinated by the amazing innovation that exists and learning about things I had missed out on while working the trenches.
But that hour quickly spiraled out of control hitting the third hour know as "the hour of total despair." How on earth can I take in all this information. I'm an auditory processor, I like to think through things out loud and reflect about what I have just learned. I'm not working in a strong learning community and my parents have to be sick of listening to my slightly nutso rants. What about other students who learn like me, love to take in information but process it verbally... cyber schools, teachers being so isolated in their classrooms... I lost the joy in my classroom because I lost the part of education that inspires my teaching... Learning.
Listening to podcasts of world class educators, discussions with some promising edtech start ups. Reading about new virtual curriculums like Amplify which will dramatically change the way we envision classrooms. When I started listening it almost seemed they were speaking a different language. How was it that I felt so isolated from all of the information and conversations around our education systems?? I was IN IT!!
I'm realizing there are a couple of explanations. (I'm going to keep these short because I could probably write 4 pages on each of these... but lets start with the basics.
1. When you're on the front lines, in the trenches it is so hard to see anything but what is right in front of you. When teaching that is 25 pairs of 12 yr olds eyes staring right back at you (or possibly sticking their tongue out at a frienemy).
2. I've been out of Grad School for 2 years now and as much as it was a pain to complete assignments on top of school work, and write papers, or respond to posts what I realize is missing is the professional adult community we had established. It was a safe space to share experiences, resources and frustrations. I don't talk to many of them on a regular basis but I think that connection will always be there. Just teaching you are not exposed to new resources.
3. There are just not enough hours in the day. Between grading, planning, parents, following up with students.
4. Leadership has to support your education as well as that of their students. When you spend $3000 to send a teacher to a conference and then restrict what they can do or try in their classroom it sends the idea that they are not valued.
So getting back to my struggles and those of my Dad... He and my mom have iPhone 4's and they continue to ask me to help them learn how to use them. But he is great at using Siri to dictate, and he can take pictures and send them, he is getting better at texting. I told him if he really wants to take the next step you have to get into social media. I set him up a twitter account... First of all, during the set up process they make you pick way too many people to follow.... we started by following only a couple people including the Wall Street Journal. Within 1 hour he comes to me concerned... "I can't do this Kate, they're sending me stuff like every 15 minutes. This is too much, how do you expect me to read all this stuff." I explained that you don't need to read every post and its just going to give you a quick blurb. We changed his WSJ to a specific section to keep the number down. But like my dad I have this same desire to learn, want to read more. I think a lot of teachers have it. Most of us are passionate about learning. It's what drew us to profession in the first place. But I'm just getting back into it, and I feel like it could be a full time job (or at least part time).
-edmodo
-The core of education
-Classroom 2.0
-21st century classroom
-Better Lesson
-edsurge
-PowerMyLearning
-Not to mention everyone on twitter now... dept of ed, education weekly, the daily show, pbs, my friends. I was looking for apps to help me organize... maybe I just don't get it but I want it to be a bit more like email that I can delete as I read or drop into files to save...
My final question is, so how on earth are teachers supposed to have time to keep up with things??? When I do go back to the classroom how to I prevent myself from getting unhappy again? And the big question I'll get back to at another time
"How do we as a society keep great, smart educators in the classroom?"
:) Katie
No comments:
Post a Comment