Teaching, Training, Enabling

Today in long term leadership planning someone made the observation that perhaps not enough technology training opportunities have been made available. As a the main person responsible for providing said training I took exception to that.

I basically defended myself by saying "I don't turn anyone away". My principal had a problem with my statement and went on to quote the fisherman quote (see below). I have been a long time subscriber to the "teach a man to fish" philosophy but realize that people do need some basic idea of what involved in fishing. Fishing a pond, the ocean, and a river all require different techniques and sometimes you need to at least point someone in the right direction.

Tonight I come home recently re-energized about blogging after spending a day listening to Will Richardson speak with our school district. I popped open the bloglines account and Bill Ferriter was posting about a Scott McLeod post regarding codependence issues of "trainers" and their learners (teachers and admin).

The comments to each article are fascinating and may be summed up as "teachers need to step up their game". While I generally agree that teachers needs to "step it up" I wonder how many will until their job requirement or perhaps self-perception about those requirements change. I wonder how many commenters were classroom teachers themselves and not just tech staff...perhaps some were like me a hybrid position that wears both hats.

Teachers need to figure out how to restructure what they do and how they do it. I went back to the classroom for one school year several years back (after being in tech for 10 years) and one of the most time consuming parts of the job was the amount of paperpushing that happened. A teacher invests a big chunk of time in pushing papers at students and then retrieving those papers. The saddest part of the transaction is that very often this transaction is little more than an exercise in futility. A teacher is pushing paper at the students. The students may experience multiple paper pushers each day. The students' job becomes to fill out those papers and push them back at the teacher. In a perfect world the teacher reviews the papers as way to better understand what was learned and what has yet to be learned. In reality the teacher is so consumed with the retrieval of the papers from all students leaving little time for meaningful feedback. Sometimes the teacher makes the extra effort to provide that specific feedback only to find the feedback in the recycle bin. Yet, we keep on doing that. Pushing the paper back and forth and keeping track of who completed what (not who learned what) exhausts a teacher leavning little time for new learning.

Let's leave technology out of the equation for a minute. I am still amazed how little discussion might be generated about some powerful learning change on the horizon. Interesting discussions I've tried to start recently in the lounge with staff include the changing world (ie Flat World), the power of formative assessment, professional learning communities, and personal learning networks. The conversation lasts briefly and quickly shifts back to last night's episode of Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, or some other chewing gum for the brain program.

My concern is not about learning new technology...but rather the "typical" teacher's general lack of willingness to learn something new, anything new.....the lack of willingness to explore, argue, debate, discuss....all those things required to learning something new that may actually make us better teachers or at least more informed individuals.