And the sooner we accept that fact, the sooner we will collectively devise a way to move us forward, whether it be a slow road or not.
This is a commentary on Ed Reform.. stick with me... I'll get there.
I have been a professional in education for almost two decades (shy a couple of years). Four of those were in the classroom, with the last being a transition year in my current position, CIO/DTC. For 13 years, I've overseen the operations of technology in our district. From the start, I have also pushed for more training for teachers and more use of technology by students. It's been a delicate balance, because education is a complex beast.
Yet, today, we still have folks that have not learned the most basic understanding of a computer. We still have folks that have to search their Bing or Google bar for Youtube, rather than simply typing youtube.com in the address bar. Many times their venture yields results that they click on first, only to bring up a false virus warning that they willing click. For the techies out there, you are thinking "job security".
For me, I find this very sad. Just as I find it very sad that so many politicians and other policy-makers think they know what is best for education. Just as I find it very sad that popular media is promoting strategies that they have no business promoting. Why can't America trust it's education professionals to make solid decisions for its country?
I'll boldly say that I'm not a "union" person, but only because how it was presented to me as a young teacher. Today, I believe that a collective voice of intellectual people that fight for a noble cause should have a say, much like the professional organizations of our current teaching profession.
I'm boldly saying that mainstream media has had a detrimental effect on education in our country. The push for more choice, charters, and the like have done nothing but demean the profession of countless Americans deserving of high praise.
Contrary to what most folks think, teachers CAN do. They do not choose their profession because they want summers off (even if that is a motivator, they quickly learn, this is not true). Teachers in America choose their profession because they love learning and they want to help our youth learn. Teachers in America know that our future lies with our youth and they want to do what they can to make our future stronger.
Only the bravest of us would choose to be a teacher in today's climate. It's time we ALL support our teachers and the larger purpose they serve.
There is only one agenda for teachers and that is to promote learning.This is being muddied by politicians being spurred on by their own agendas. Labor reform, Tax reduction, schools for profit, and Union Busting are all possible and plausible agendas for our elected officials. None of these are in the interest of better ways for kids to learn. As a profession we need to stand up to those who would sacrifice our kids for anything but real reform for learning.
ReplyDeleteAside from any political issues -- and I agree with what you've said on this topic -- I see our current wave of "reform" and it looks way too much like the last two or three: Teachers sitting in small groups "deconstructing standards" with paper and pencil or (maybe) word processing. If the upper levels of our education system wanted reform, this would be an excellent way to introduce the rank and file to the real power of modern technology and the Internet: collaboration and creation of content by the crowd. For instance, why aren't all the science teachers from Ashland to Paducah writing all of these new standards together in collaboration instead of creating 100's of individual documents? What a great model it would be for classroom teachers to see something like Google Docs or the Office Live technology used in this way. They could see the benefit of collaboration and technology and produce works that are meaningful beyond the boundaries of their own school district. This is something of an oversimplification of how this could be done, but not really much of one. The logistics could be worked out. I know that this is maybe what they think they are doing right this minute, but it really doesn't look much like it from this end. IMO what's going on right now isn't any kind of reform, it's a huge sales job by the companies that make the most money off of education. The collaboration I've mentioned above isn't a solution and it would only go so far, but if it only opened up a few eyes to a few possibilities it would make a huge difference.
ReplyDeleteInteresting reflection David. I've heard several folks say they wish CIITS would provide this functionality.
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