Thursday,
May 09, 2014
8:30 AM
As a retiring
teacher, I've recently "reflected" deeply about my 40+ year career in
education, what I've learned over the
years, and what yet needs to be done by my future colleagues. As I pass the
baton of my career to two nieces and a godchild who have decided to join this
noble profession, I want them to know what it has taken to get here, what
rewards the profession has had, and the challenges ahead of them.
Thankfully, I've
been blessed with having a career that spanned from teaching Pre-K to teaching Master's degree classes,
and I've watched education morph frequently.
Some of these changes were good, others were not, and some have come
back again with a different acronym. These are my thoughts on where education
has come from, and where it is currently
heading and what future teachers will need to think about.
So to my fellow
teachers remaining in the classroom, and to new teachers, I leave the following legacies:
1. The legacy of theories on student learning
- From open spaced classrooms who were
coming into their glory during my student teaching experience, to theories
about Assertive Discipline now morphed and called PBIS, to Dimensions of
Learning, Multiple Intelligences, Content Literacy, Problem and Project Based
Learning, Inquiry Learning, and now Common Core, the path to understanding student learning has been far
from boring or plain. Each theory has
improved a piece of the educational process or has changed as the needs of
students have changed.
I suspect learning
theories will evolve even more as the nature of learning changes. Technology
will enable the use of data mining, to morph learning, and aid both teachers and
students. Although currently, teaching is
heavily focused on the data mining and reporting, and it has seemingly taken
over the classroom and the media,
eventually the data will also enable individualized learning letting
students have input into their learning path, and teachers will become guides
on the sides. I challenge future teachers to make sure those paths are strong and correct.
2. The Political legacy - although I started my career with the
attitude that I could never go on strike because it would leave children
feeling that teachers have given up on them, my own feelings for the
political process have morphed over the years. As I've watched older
teachers being pushed out of the classroom by changing their grade level
after 30 years in the same one, or by giving them the hardest students to
handle, and having a colleague hounded by administration and demoted to an
aide because she was unaware that her administrator was lying to the press
when the teacher told the truth, my respect for the union and its place in
education has grown. Watching the
"language" disappear from the contracts over the years to
whittle away at our sick leave and other benefits, has caused me to become
more politically active in my older years.
But
the hardest part has been watching as politicians have led the movement on
bashing teachers by making education dollars the carrot that controls money
hungry administrators. Although their
"truisms" seem right (NCLB, RTTT), the funding machine has gotten into the hands of
business leaders who don't understand education. I remember one motivational speaker during
the "education should be run like a business" phase who talked about
how he had created a successful ice cream business, but was floored when a
teacher asked him " What do you do in your business when the blueberries
come to the dock damaged?" He
replied "We send them back." The teacher then replied "We can't
send our blueberries back." Nor do
we want to send them back.
Although
these business leaders thought they were doing right by creating foundations,
the corporate wheel has taken over and is not allowing enough input from
teachers or enough time for their ideas to be tested, researched and tried with
real students. Somehow, all the new ideals
(Common Core, PARCC, Teacher evaluations) are being rolled out without
norm referencing and criterion testing.
Therefore,
I challenge my colleagues to continue fighting politically for things that work, have been
tried and tested, and for your own professionalism.
3. I pass on my technological
legacy - while this is my true
passion, it is also the legacy that has morphed the most during my
tenure. From using typewriters in
high school, to basic computers like the Commodore, DOS based computing,
emails sent at 1200 baud, and Archie, Veronica and the World Wide
Web, to the mobile web and the
cloud today, technology will have the greatest impact on the educational
process. Although all the early changes took lots of time and effort to
figure out, the speed of changes today are so rapid that very few people
can keep up. In fact, even the
government has the vision of where technology can go, but ran across the
major glitches with the Affordable Health Care Act. However, those same glitches can be
avoided if Usability Studies in
Human Computer Interaction theory are utilized before major rollouts like
PARCC testing occur. But getting the politicians to slow down long enough
to test the tests, and the evaluation system, as well as any future
changes, will be your challenge.
My
secret passions are really
individualized and global learning. If the learning my students garnered during
my Kidlink days using global projects in the 1990's could have been spread more
quickly, then 9/11 may have been avoided.
But we were such a small but global entity in the 90's passing on
respect for global partners, celebrating similarities and differences, and
making students aware of the global community.
With today's tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and mobile apps those
global projects have so much more potential for creating awareness of and for
other cultures. Your challenge will be
to explore Social media tools, particularly online discussion tools, to enable
your students to interact with their global peers. If my 4th grade students in
1998 were able to write a mystery story with students in Denmark and an author
in New Hampshire, and have the story critiqued by students in South Africa and
Maryland's Eastern Shore, and shared with global peers, imagine YOUR possibilities now!
In
addition, the technology can now be harnessed through Learning Management
Systems to enable Common Core to focus and direct skills to individual
students, enabling students to progress at their own speed. If teachers can be
involved in developing the online curriculums to match the common core, then
students who have been exposed to the technology as infants will be able to
plow through the skill at their own pace in that digital environment. Your challenge will be to make sure all
students can develop their strengths, but also develop their weaknesses. You will also need to be sure that the whole
child can be developed in spite of the technology.
4. Last but not least, I pass on
my time and talent legacy - I wish
I could bottle and pass on the 40 years of patience I've developed over
the years while teaching thousands of kids and impacting others through
the teachers I've taught or mentored.
Although that is not possible, I can pass on my wish for you to be
treated as professionals. If
college professors can take sabbaticals every seven years, why can't
teachers do the same? I've left the
classroom several times, each one for my own professional growth in the
educational field, and have returned a stronger teacher (in my opinion,
not necessarily that of my superior's).
But imagine if I could have left the classroom with the blessing of
my district… If every teacher had a 6 month or year hiatus every seven
years to grow professionally, interact with researchers in their field,
and had time to analyze their own
teaching, what could they bring back to their district and
students? They would feel valued
and respected, and further the educational field more efficiently. Students and other teachers would truly
benefit from their experiences.
Therefore, I challenge you to take on the political forces to
change society's view of teachers, and fight for the time for your own
professional growth.
In conclusion, I
challenge future teachers take all of the above philosophies and blend them to
make new ones that will further education.
I will be cheering from the sidelines, and hoping that teachers are
included in the process and guiding these changes. Have confidence in yourselves….you know what needs to be done for students. And
hopefully I'll still be around to watch you pass your baton…. :-)
Best wishes,
A Retiring
educator,
Cybrscrybe
Cybrscrybe
©2014
