Challenging their Professional Identity

Wesley Fryer, of Moving @ the Speed of Creativity, is one of my favorite blogsters to read.  He always has interesting information, ideas, and insights.  I like how he also involves his children and their technology activities, sometimes, in his blogs. He seems like such a kind, generous, mild mannered person and then suddenly…

He makes some VERY CHALLENGING (but true!) STATEMENTS:

Wesley says, “To ask an educator used to lecturing every day to give it up for vodcasting, and instead to both craft and lead highly-interactive, engaging face-to-face discussions with students is tantamount to challenging their professional identity and raison d’être.”

Read the whole blog here.  He started the whole story with talk about the “Teaching Naked” controversial comment/title in an article about Dr. José A. Bowen of Southern Methodist University.

Because so many teachers of today are the BABY BOOMERS, who are getting ready to retire, as soon as their teacher pensions will allow them to retire (in this economy), there is little (if none) desire to “re-work” lectures and lesson plans by MANY teachers, but this is not everyone in the profession. 

Now I have to qualify myself here.  I, too, am a BABY BOOMER, who currently is out of the classroom. (I thought I’d retire and then along came the recession and all of its negative impact on my financial security!)

But I am trying to get back into teaching in the classroom because…  I WANT to do this type of teaching.  I personally am a lifelong learner plus technology and collaborative learning are exciting prospects for me.

True, I am at the elementary level, not high school and college, but the statement above by Wesley Fryer is still pertinent in the elementary education classroom as well.

I also have another question that may or may not be related to this whole topic. You decide.

Are we teaching the future teachers how to teach in this “new” manner or are they just learning the “same old ways” we BABY BOOMERS were taught in the late 60’s and 70s?

Tell me what you think. And if you think we are not teaching them in the “new” manner, what needs to be done? What can we do as leaders?

[As always, in my author quotes, the underlines, color changes, and bold type is mine, not the author’s.  I do this so often, I should probably put a disclaimer to this effect at the bottom of every blog!]

Technorati Tags: Wesley Fryer,Moving @ Speed of Creativity,Dr. José A. Bowen,Baby Boomers,teaching,life long learning,new teachers,challenges,professional identity,vodcasting,collaborative learning,technology,elementary education

21st Century Schools and the Workplace

Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November from Brian Mull on Vimeo.

This video takes about 13 minutes to view.

When you watch it, you should have a piece of paper ready to take down the important parts.  I didn’t the first time I watched it. 

It started out like a travel video of some wonderful 17th century town on the East coast. 

I was wondering why I was watching it, but I had seen it on PHS Principal Blog. That blog is described as a “High school principal blogs about education, technology, student engagement and things that are happening at Paris High School in Illinois”. I am originally and most of my life from IL, so I have an interest in reading what is happening there.

Now, as the writer of the blog states, “only my mom reads it!”  But recently there has been some consolidation of several schools and districts, etc. so I expect there might be more posts to read in the future. Although this blog does not have a great deal of posts (in the past), I usually enjoy each and every post made, so I wanted to look at this video he had posted for us to view. He said these are “videos over the next few days to inspire and challenge those of you here to think about school and what it should be!”

Also the video says… by Alan November. His is a name to be remembered in the education field, so it must be a good video! On the website November Learning, it says about Alan:

"An iconoclast whose common sense we cannot afford to ignore. He is at the heart of the matter regarding student learning and the imperatives of the future."

In this video, Alan November is so subtle in his teaching (to me!) that I had to listen to it more than once to be sure I got what he really was saying.  He lulls you into the words and sometimes, you are not really sure if you just heard a GREAT THOUGHT, or if you just imagined it!

If you just want one sentence paragraph about what the video says (IMHO):

We must shift the paradigm of the way we are teaching from the TEACHER IS THE BOSS Model to the WE ARE ALL LEARNERS Model where there is collaborative, self-directed LIFE LONG learning preparing students for the WORKPLACE of the 21st Century.  (WHOA! I did get it in one LONG sentence.  I hadn’t thought it was possible!)

Alan November gives many examples of “friends of mine” who are teaching and using this approach or that approach.  He certainly is lucky to be able to travel the country and see all these examples and hear about them from special teachers, like Bob Sprankle.

I was going to go back through the video and write down all the IMPORTANT PARTS and review them here, making my own comments on each item, but I think the readers can do that on their own. 

THEN, after viewing and thinking about the video, tell me what you thought were the most important thoughts.  What did you learn from watching the video? 

I am interested in your opinion.

Technorati Tags: Alan November,Bob Sprankle,paradigm,teaching,learning,education,shift,Teacher is BOSS,collaborative learning,self-directed learning,life long learners